#but because of how it completely and utterly fucks over HIS CHARACTER AND CHARACTERISATION

[moiraineswife]

How did Az get fucked over with the Moriel thing?

-Because the relationship between them was twisted from ‘mutual interest with issues on both side and Az’s insecurity holding him back from pursuing a relationship with a woman who is ready to be with him but is holding herself back due to respecting him, his experiences and choices’ to ‘creepy, obsessive straight guy can’t take a hint and quietly pines after a queer woman for five hundred years making her actively uncomfortable with his attentions and being a contributing factor in her remaining closeted as well as sleeping with men she may or may not want to to maintain distance between them/. That’s....Fucked up on so many levels I can’t. (And this is not a condemnation of Az’s character - this is a condemnation of Maas’ writing because this should never have been done to him, it disgusts me) 

-Because Azriel was set-up to serve as a safe space for Mor in ACOMAF (he watches out for her, he supports her, he protects her, he is the one to go and talk to her and help calm her down when she’s upset and panicky. This is explicitly canon) and in ACOWAR she’s made to be afraid of him/ his outbursts. Cassian is forced between them as a buffer to make her feel safer/to relax afterwards. She sleeps with Helion/other men to remind Azriel she isn’t interested in him/to force distance between them. She is “petrified” of coming out to him. (This is a complaint beyond my Moriel shipping, obviously I shipped them romantically

-Because it’s implied that Eris knows about Mor’s sexuality and wouldn’t have touched her/forced her to be with him...But Azriel is set up as still loving her and lusting after her somehow completely oblivious to her sexuality/lack of interest in him. And I’m supposed to believe this...And be okay with it. That a man who abused her, who left her to die, who terrifies and traumatises her...Has more regard for her choices and feelings than Azriel, who was set up to love her unconditionally, to represent safety and security for her. Like. Sure.  

-Because I’m having a harder and harder time accepting the CoN fiasco as being in character for Az. It feels lazy to me. He’s a cookie-cutter copy of Rhys in that scene. I could POTENTIALLY have gone with Azriel not warning Mor about Eris the way Rhys did if it had been for her, if it had been to somehow protect her because she wasn’t supposed to be there/know until later (god fucking knows this thing is impossible to retcon) But I’m having a harder and harder time accepting him not telling her for the same reason as Rhys ‘I don’t trust you, you’re a silly, oversensitive child and I’m afraid you’re going to fuck this up for us’. Not Az, not with Mor, like, sorry. It feels like something to draw lines between them and force them apart/retcon/undo the Moriel set-up she did in ACOMAF to try and make the reveal better. 

-Because (this is my personal interpretation/opinion and not one I expect many people to share, and is something I’m having a lot of difficulty putting into words but...) A lot of the Cassian/Mor moments in ACOWAR felt like they should have been Mor/Azriel moments that were dramatically retconned/that Cassian was made far more physically affectionate and closer to Mor than initially appeared in ACOMAF to further force distance between moriel, give Mor some kind of support but strip away any potential Azriel/Mor scenes because of the “”””reveal”””” of her sexuality and Maas’ sudden desire to stop baiting the ship as much. (I loved the Cassian/Mor moments in ACOWAR, I’ve already said this but some of them felt...Like a lot more/altered from their relationship in ACOMAF which I felt demonstrated their unconditional love/support for one another while also maintaining aspects of friction and volatility that they do have. Like I said I’m struggling putting this into words but some parts felt like this was being shoved down my throat just a little too much. might just have been bad writing, might have been forcing Cass as the buffer and forcing Mor and Az further apart. I don’t know) 

-Because Moriel could have been a beautiful platonic relationship about the deep, undying unconditional love that these two people have for one another; for the lengths they will go to for one another and the things they would do and sacrifice to keep each other safe....Instead I’ve got a narrative involving a ‘petrified’ closeted queer woman and a man who can’t take a hint and obsessively won’t let her go/stop loving her despite what it does for her and like....I’m sorry but Azriel deserved so much fucking better than that. It’s disgusting. I feel vaguely ill writing all this out. 

I was happy with the Az content coming out of ACOWAR (and needing some kind of light in this black pit I probably got blinded by that to begin with) the flying lessons with Feyre were excellent, his moments during battle were beautiful, his rescue of Elain showed the compassion that he has in-line with Cassian. 

But I can’t ignore this seriously ugly undercurrent and how it transforms Azriel from a (legitimately) traumatised, insecure abuse victim lacking self worth and self esteem after the horrific abuse he endured as a child...And forces him into the narrative of the entitled straight man whose obsessive love makes a girl feel too afraid to say no to him and like...I’m sorry but in fucking up Moriel with this Dramatic Plot Twist Maas screwed over Mor’s character (infinitely more than Az’s, I’m not arguing that for a second) but it fucks Azriel’s up too. And not because ‘oh no he’s going to be so sad when she comes out to him the poor bat’ but because it turns him into an obsessive creep who, in some ways, is marked out as looking worse than her abuser. 

Bottom line is, what Maas did with the Moriel in ACOWAR fucks up Mor’s character, Azriel’s character, and the entire dynamic of the Inner Circle. I genuinely cannot believe how poorly this ‘twist’ was thought out. I feel gross now. I’m going to take a shower. 

[lonelier-version-of-you]

Henrik Hansen

This one was so obvious two entire people asked for it! Here we go. *cracks knuckles*

Why I like them: God, where do I even start? He's just perfect. An utterly incredible character. Specifically, he is literally the best autistic character I have ever seen in any piece of media, ever.

I love that he has low empathy, and is still incredibly loving and compassionate to the point that it practically defines him. I love how he struggles with emotional stuff and prefers to take a more logical view of the world, and yet this actually informs his sense of morality rather than making him go "lol I'm the only person who matters and I don't care about anybody else" (which is actually a very illogical point of view, but for some reason, it's still an attitude all too common in characters like Henrik).

I love how he's chronically mentally ill and hasn't magically gotten better, but he's still portrayed as someone who's trying their best and is worthy of love and support, rather than "not trying hard enough to recover".

I love that he's a queer autistic character (you really would be shocked how rare those are).

I love how he once had a meltdown in public and his friends didn't get mad at him for it or take him any less seriously as a professional afterwards.

Basically, he is really fucking important to me. By far my favourite fictional character of all time.

Why I don't: He really needs to work on his misogyny.

And his emotionally lashing out at people to deal with his own feelings, while a relatable trait I can sympathise with, is a bad thing and he needs to work on that too.

His treatment of Sahira, in general (I'm talking about the early episodes where he was her former mentor and in love with her, not the recent stuff that completely changed the story to make them "childhood friends"), was just awful and very very toxic. In light of the fact that he's obviously been written as an abuse survivor from the start, I can understand his behaviour a lot more and think it was a very realistic portrayal of someone trying - without realising they were trying - to re-enact their own trauma that they hadn't properly acknowledged or dealt with, but it doesn't make the way he treated her okay. (However, he did evidently learn from it, as he hasn't treated anyone like that since, so I'll give him that.)

Favourite episode: Can I pick a top 5? If Not For You, Never Let Me Go, Group Animal, We Need To Talk About Fredrik, No Matter Where You Go There You Are part 2. (Listed in no particular order, except chronological.)

Honourary mentions to Blind Spot, The Cost of Loving & Like A Prayer, One Man And His God, Black Dog, Report To The Mirror, In The Right Place, and, of course, Hanssen/Hemingway.

Favourite season: SERIES. 15. Enough said. The writing for him in that series was just spot on.

...It probably also helps that it's by far the series that makes most of a point of the fact that Henrik is disabled, so there's that. That's definitely part of why I love it so much.

Series 19 is a close runner-up for the second half of the series (i.e. the Fredrik storyline) alone, as is series 20 (I genuinely felt Henrik's characterisation was mostly very good throughout series 20, for all its other faults).

Favourite line: Same one as ever. "Have you never wanted to escape? Feel that weightlessness one normally feels only in water? Finally feel... truly free? I'd like nothing more." from Hanssen/Hemingway.

Favourite outfit: I adored this one at first sight, and it's probably still my favourite: his outfit from S22E25, the episode where Essie dies.

Nabbed this screenshot from @hcscreenshots because I couldn't be bothered to go and search the episode to get one myself:

It's just, like, such a queer outfit and I love it.

He's also worn a few outfits over the years that have matched the colours of the bisexual pride flag, so I like those. Good for him. And I like the pink or purple shirts he sometimes wears.

OTP: Johnrik 5ever, but I also really adored him with Carole and I'm very very sad they'll never properly be together. And him and Maja were definitely soulmates, just soulmates who never worked out. :(

I'm liking him with Russ so far too, but I'll have to wait a little longer and see more of them before I can call them an OTP.

BroTP: Him and Jac, obviously. I love their friendship. I also really love his dynamics with Sacha and with Dom. His friendship with Arthur was perfect (autistic solidarity!), he has some great autistic solidarity going on with Jason too. His friendship with Tara was really underrated. And, of course, I enjoy his friendships with all the rest of the Cryptid Squad. ...Aaaand now I'm just listing all my favourite Henrik friendships, lmao.

I also platonically (and romantically, but just for fun) ship him with Eli. I know they've barely shared any scenes so far, but I liked their interactions in S23E24.

Headcanon: Hm. *looks at my long list of Henrik headcanons, tries to figure out which ones I haven't shared yet* Oh, here's one: he enjoys sewing. Especially by hand (I think he'd find the repetitive motions very soothing), but even with a sewing machine. I like to think his mum taught him how when he was a child - he saw her mending something, and wanted to know what she was doing - and it's been a hobby of his ever since.

Unpopular opinion: Do you WANT me to get started on my unpopular Henrik opinions? We could be here all week.

But here's one: he should not be CEO. Not only is he not even good at the job, but it makes him utterly miserable! He only does the job because he feels obligated to! This has literally been explicitly stated in multiple episodes! Why is everyone so obsessed with seeing Henrik keep doing a job that makes him miserable?

A wish: I just want him to get an autism diagnosis. And I want him to come out to himself and find a happy relationship (those 2 things can be connected or not, I don't care). I want them to mention his Judaism again before the show ends. I want him to move to Casualty and get the writing Casualty gives their disabled characters, but NOT the writing Casualty gives their queer characters 'cause that usually sucks.

But most of all, I just want him to get a happy ending.

An oh-god-please-don't-ever-happen: It would absolutely emotionally destroy me if they ever killed him off. I'm not exaggerating. You all saw how I was when I thought he was going to die last month.

5 words to best describe them: Compassionate (this comes, and always should come, first). Intelligent. Isolated. Caring. Self-sacrificing.

My nickname for them: Don't really have one, although sometimes I like to call him 'min vacker kanelbulle' (Swedish for "my beautiful cinnamon roll", lmao). Also, I say "Henrik my poor baby" so often - because of how much they torment him - that it's practically a nickname of its own at this point. XD

[pensivetense]

A List Of (Mostly TMA) Fic Recs Sorted By Vibe

Not an exhaustive list by any means, just a few favourites that caught my fancy. I shortened many of the summaries for space.

I’m going to pin this here and update it as I go.

Also, I’m pensivetense on ao3

MELANCHOLY VIBES

for when you want to feel comfortably muted

(sad but not utterly bleak endings here)

Hope, Etc. (Dickenson, et al.) by yellow_caballero

Jonathan Sims, six months after the Unknowing, wakes to find himself without a daemon - without humanity, without a soul. It’s a cursed half-life, but existence as a shell without a heart isn’t so bad: between solving the mystery of a persistent illusion cast over his friends and some light pseudo-cannibalism, a life as a monster is better than no life at all. At least, it would be, if it wasn’t for the fucking Owl.

A freaking. Amazing. Daemon au. Ties the lore of Dust with TMA lore very satisfyingly, but is mostly about Jon navigating what it means to be human, or, in the absence of that, a person, and doesn’t require prior knowledge of His Dark Materials. Cannot recommend highly enough.

after one long season of waiting by nuinuijiaojiao

Annabelle is not used to having nice things. or, Annabelle heads to Upton House, muses a little, and gets some well-deserved rest

I love survivalist Annabelle and also the concept of the Web as kind of a horrible Patron, actually.

i love you. I want us both to eat well. by SmallishWormMasterOfTheUniverse

At the safehouse with Martin, Jon decides it's time to quit statements once and for all. The Eye disagrees. Martin just needs Jon to be okay. It's quite possible that nobody is going to get what they want.

Scottish Safehouse Era, Jon and Martin coping with their respective Entities... really, really good.

the friend by doomcountry

He always greets a new spider when he meets it. It’s instinct, born in childhood, the same way he instinctively counts magpies, or flicks salt over his left shoulder. A little harmless superstition. A bit of politesse.

A great Martin character study with eldritch spider horror included. The imagery regularly haunts me (in a good way).

autumn’s rare gift by bee_bro

Annually, the two meet, renewing the binding ritual where it had all started. The procedure simple: a waltz.

Singlehandedly made me ship Gertrude/Agnes so there’s that. It’s so bittersweet and bee_bro’s writing is, as always, incredibly poetic. (I’d recommend everything they write, actually.)

smile, you’re trending by Goodluckdetective

During an encounter with another Avatar of the Eye, Jon faces his past, Martin takes a turn at playing Kill Bill and Basira has a second look at the monster she’s determined to see. For three people associated with the Eye, they could all use some perspective.

Features an original Eye Avatar character who’s a YouTube personality; she is infuriating and inspired and genuinely frightening and I cannot say enough good things.

Humility by The_Lionheart

have you no idea that you're in deep?/i've dreamt about you nearly every night this week,/how many secrets can you keep?

An OC centric story but don’t let that put you off, it’s amazing. Very heavily focused around Jonah Magnus and the other Avatars as they change through the years. Also, I’d die for the OC.

oh, for one sweet second without the eye series by faedemon

Beholding does not like in the way humans do, but it likes its Archivist all the same.

I’m just so fond of the way this is done stylistically. I have a great weakness for dialogue only/dialogue heavy writing, not to mention all of the wonderful character beats and interplay of humanity/inhumanity for Jon and Melanie.

Rewind by WhyNotFly

It takes eight days of forced confinement for Jon to start hallucinating. [...] It’s Martin, though, that his exhausted brain conjures, because of course it’s Martin. After all this time, of course it’s Martin.

Jon willingly allows himself to be confined rather than hunting for statements, and examines his relationship with Martin.

for a firmament series by supaslim

There is beauty in destruction. There is art in becoming. In which Jon becomes the Archive, and the Archive becomes Jon.

Part two posted this morning and uhhh. Good. Also if you’re here for weird eldritch body horror (I am), this one’s for you.

ONES THAT JUST HURT

for when you want to feel sad

(somewhat bleaker endings here/everyone is NOT okay)

Feste by yellow_caballero

If asked, Martin would say that he became the shadow director of the Magnus Institute by accident. But nobody ever asked, and nobody ever cared, and it was in this way that Martin stopped lying to himself. Or: break free, Martin. All you have to lose are your chains. And your sanity.

Oh, this one totally didn’t go the way I expected it to. A study in isolation. Could go into the category above, as the ending is not bleak, but the tone of the whole is somewhat more depressing than most there.

Ghosts of Love by RavenXavier

Nothing made Martin more grounded in the world than yearning for Jonathan Sims.

Lonely!Martin that really captures a sort of visceral ache. Hurts me and yet I keep rereading.

i do desire (we may be better strangers) by godbewithyouihavedone

For ages, it only knew how to worship, taking human bodies and living off the fear of those who remembered. It never knew love until it became Jonathan Sims. Now it must fight against every instinct to save Martin Blackwood. Archivist Sasha, Not!Jon/Martin, and the worst kind of Fake Dating AU.

Oh, this one just made me sad. The poor not!them, which is something I never thought I’d say.

Apple Of Your Eye by fakeCRfan

In which the Eye is fond of Martin. Perhaps a little too fond for comfort.

Somehow manages to be both sweet and horrifying—the characterisation of the Eye is incredible. ‘The Eye loves Martin’ is a scenario that’s so utterly doomed to failure and yet the writing is packed with so much pathos that I just want them all to be happy. A fantastic use of themes of agency and choice, and the single best use of Beholding as a source of horror I’ve read.

The Last Press by copperbadge

Jon Sims is awake, and has begun preparations for the Rite of the Watcher's Crown. Peter Lukas, who woke him, would be content to rule at his side. Martin is very upset about all of this, and the Lukases aren't thrilled with it either.

I really can’t say anything without spoiling the end and it’s so good. An alternate take on the Watcher’s Crown. Not a pairing that I ever thought would work for me, but this made it work.

watch the blood evaporate by 75hearts

It starts, like so many things in Jon’s life have started, with a nagging itch of curiosity. Jonathan Sims uses his healing abilities throughout s4. Read the tags.

Dear God please read the tags. But this is some high quality pain if it’s for you.

the lighthouse series by low_fi

Peter Lukas is a lighthouse keeper. One evening, he gets a call from a cryptic overseer tasked with monitoring his work.

This is such a vivid and yet subtle story—from the setting to the emotions portrayed, it creeps up on you slowly. The ending was like the gentlest possible gut-punch. The sequel just completed, and yeah, just as wonderful. This one is very much LonelyEyes but I listed it here because it is just exquisitely painful.

SATISFYINGLY HOPEFUL VIBES

for when you want to feel cozy

Clutching Daffodils by Gemi

Martin has always liked the idea of love at first sight. It’s such a romantic idea, the whole thing of it. Seeing someone and instantly feeling that strange, twisting feeling deep inside that every single media likes to obsess over. Of knowing you are in love within the day, petals falling from your mouth and warmth filling your chest as love burrows deep, vines twisting through your lungs. He always liked the idea of it. And then Jonathan Sims starts working at the Magnus Institute.

Somehow manages to be lighter and fluffier than most hanahaki fare, despite the setting. I’ve reread this one a lot.

the least he could do by Prim_the_Amazing

Martin should in fact not pick this man, specifically because of how attracted he is to him. It would be the responsible thing to do. Except he’s already following him. And he’s hungry.

Fluffy vampire au which everyone’s probably already read, but was too good not to mention.

rather interesting by bee_bro

Jonah Magnus realizes that, for some reason, when he comes in contact with weed, Elias Bouchard's consciousness will come into his life banging pots and pans.

Oh boy. So these are all favourite fics but this one is a favourite amongst favourites. The way Jonah is characterised (i.e. incredibly sensitive to scrutiny) is my favourite depiction of him, and the slow-burn between him and Elias is far sweeter than it has any right to be. Also, it’s hilarious.

The Magnus Records series by ErinsWorks

In a world parallel to that of the Archives and the Institute, a supernatural sanctuary stands against a cruel and uncaring world: A world of bureaucracy and tyranny, of murder and carnage, of loneliness and surveillence, of plague and death. But in this world of fear and misery, 14 entities born of the hopes of the world have emerged. And one of them has made their home here, at The Magnus Sanctuary. Perhaps, the employees within may lead happier lives than their counterparts did in the Archives.

This is just so goddamn pure. The author writes a really imaginative, fleshed-out alternate world and alternate Entities with engaging, well-written short statements. All of the character voices are absolutely on point, and it’s overall absurdly hopeful without ever feeling overly saccharine. I love this series so much, you guys, you don’t even know. I want to print it out and paste it on my wall. I love it.

HARD APOCALYPSE

for when you want to feel dark and angsty (and eldritch)

Most of these are shorts/oneshots because it’s just that kind of genre, y’know?

Ashes to Ashes by marrowbones

A conversation at the end of the world.

Oliver Banks is one of those minor characters that I am overly attached to. Love him here.

Employee Benefits by equals_eleven_thirds

The Magnus Institute offered some normal employee benefits: a pension plan, holidays, travel subsidies, free lunch on the last Friday of each month. Rosie makes it work.

This manages to hit that perfect sweet spot of satisfying and hilarious. Rosie gets to torment Elias, as she well deserves.

a rose by any other name by Duck_Life

Part of Jon blooms in Jared Hopworth’s garden.

This one was sad and honestly too gentle to really belong in this category, but I love it.

Eye to Eye by Dribbledscribbles

In which Jonah Magnus attempts a post-apocalyptic pep talk.

Unreliable narrator at its finest, and the implications are suitably horrific.

commensalis by doomcountry

The tower is endlessly, impossibly tall, but Jon’s work is taller.

If you’re here for the eldritch imagery, then this has some of the best.

SOFT APOCALYPSE

for when you want to feel gently triumphant

apocalypse how series by sunshine_states

Humanity adjusts. The Entities have Regrets.

Some nice vignettes set in a kinder apocalypse.

ceylon series by Sciosa

The one in which Jonathan Sims decides that no, actually, he isn't going to let the world just end.

I include this only for the sake on completeness, as everyone has no doubt already read it.

rituals by doomcountry

Martin is the first person to knock on the Archivist's door since it arrived, fully, into its little waiting temple. The Archivist saw him coming from down the hall, but decides to feign interest when the knob turns, and Martin—still a little bit smaller, a little more translucent than before—stands uncertainly just outside the room.

This one’s a little less focused on the world at large and more on JonMartin specifically.

we raise it up by savrenim

Jonathan Sims reads a book and saves the world; although maybe the real salvation is the friends he makes along the way; (although perhaps the world itself and the darkness that exists behind it isn't quite as out to get everyone as it seems).

More ‘soft revolution’ than ‘soft apocalypse’, but has the same vibe. A time travel fix-it. Incomplete but worth it if this is a mood that appeals to you.

Scarred Ground by DictionaryWrites

“You see," Elias said softly, "people always have this idea that only living things can be scarred - and they're right, of course. But a building is a living thing, Martin. And the ground can be scarred, too." "I don't have any scars," Martin said. "Yes, you do," Elias said. "You just need the right light to see them.”

Falls somewhere between ‘Apocalypse’ and ‘Soft Apocalyse’ but I’m putting it here because I feel like it. Also technically a LonelyEyes fic. I found it hard to follow at first but it’s worth sticking with; things will eventually begin to make sense and come together.

LONELYEYES

for when you want to feel lonelyeyes

marrying anguish with one last wish by procrastinatingbookworm

In which Elias isn't Orpheus, and Peter isn't Eurydice, but Elias brings Peter home anyway.

Lives in my head rent free forever. My favourite lonelyeyes fic.

ouroboros by Wildehack

“You know,” Jonah says, a muscle in his calf quivering agreeably where it’s slung over Mordechai’s shoulder, “it’s really quite--fortunate--that I don’t care for you at all.”

Oh, this one hurts in the best possible way. The endless cycle of their relationship, the way it comes full-circle... yeah, good. Actually, no, this one might be my favourite. It’s a tie.

Breaking all the Rules by Thedupshadove

Elias proposes a somewhat...unusual wager.

Soft lonelyeyes? In my recs? It’s more likely than you think. Short, sweet, and... sweet.

Threefold by Sprinkledeath

Peter Lukas breaks three rules.

I’m just a slut for mythology allusions I guess.

Luck Be A Lady Tonight by prodigy

In 2014, Elias Bouchard takes a rare trip outside of his comfort zone. Peter Lukas wastes a bunch of money. You'd be surprised how many things can go wrong for two beings of cosmic power.

I love the sense of the history of them you get while reading this.

love is just a word (the idea seems absurd) by kaneklutz

"Something's wrong. It's stopped hurting" An avatar of the Lonely and an avatar of the Beholding walk into a bar relationship. It was bound to blow up in their faces.

Short, sweet, painful. Excellent exploration of their priorities.

Victor by penguistifical

elias tries something with his powers that he hasn't attempted before

The one where Elias tries to raise the dead. Not incredibly LonelyEyes centric but that’s still the pairing.

Simon Says by penguistifical

“Peter asked me to drop by and have a word with you, and, so, here I am.” Simon chuckles at Elias’s disbelieving stare. “Well, he asked in his own way. He’s not a complicated man, you know. He either comes from your arms looking like a stroked cat that’s been given a dish of cream or looking like he’s been in that toy boat of his out in an unexpected storm. He was far angrier than normal, so I daresay you weren’t cream today.”

I mean personally I’d just go ahead and rec all of penguistifical’s LonelyEyes fics but this is a standout for me.

AROMANTIC AND ASPEC MOODS

for when you want to feel Seen

The Aro Archives series by WhyNotFly

These are all just really really good. From Aro!Peter to two different aro-spec versions of the Scottish Safehouse to a long and beautiful aro hanahaki fic, this series is uniformly wonderful. The two Scottish Safehouse ones (Torn Edges and Murky Water) are my comfort fics.

and now all fear gives way by j_quadrifons

Before he can think it through, he murmurs, "Is that what it feels like? Being in love?" Martin's hand stills in his hair and Jon's stomach drops.

This one just. Wow yeah this is how it be. Another absolute comfort fic of mine.

Sweet As Roses by Prim_the_Amazing

Jon takes Martin by the shoulders, leans up on the tips of his toes, and kisses him.

I’m going to be honest—I didn’t know where to put this one. But it ended up here because the real standout of this fic for me is the portrayal of Sasha, and especially her portrayal as an aro character. So I’m putting it here. Mind the content warnings with this one!

HUMOUR

for when you want to feel delight

The Torment of Sebastian Skinner by Urbenmyth

After the Eye's victory, the statement givers are trapped in their horror stories, living them over and over again. Naturally, this works out better for some then for others.

Premise? Delightful. Execution? Fantastic. I read this one to cheer myself up when I’m sad.

Unlucky by VolxdoSioda

Jon’s dice betray him

Short, sweet DnD au, and the reason I cannot get DM!Elias out of my head now.

Voracious by beetl

A bird hits the window. Jon experiences The Flesh's thrall.

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” but make it literal.

The Stupid Endings by Urbenmyth

There are a lot of very deeply thought out and creative AUs on this site. These aren't among them. These ones are how the story could have ended, if Jonny Sims was a dumbass.

These are just uniformly hilarious, I cannot recommend them highly enough.

PODCAST CROSSOVERS

for when you want to make one of those “if I had a nickel for every time...” posts

The Sabbatical by morelikeassassin

Nicholas Waters is in need of an all-knowing eldritch entity beyond the confines of human imagining to help with his latest ritual. He'll have to settle for Jonathan Sims, who happens to have nothing better to do.

Crossover with Archive 81 (s3, specifically). Both fun and bittersweet.

The City And Its Sorrows by cuttooth

“What makes you think your friend is in Eskew?” David asks. He feels he can risk the scrutiny of the city that far. “I read that this is a place people end up when they get lost,” says the man. “This is a place people end up,” David agrees./The Archivist comes to Eskew.

Contemplative piece, and I love the way it presents David’s relationship with Eskew, the way he finds it horrible and hates it and yet belongs to it, is almost proud in the way he shows to to Jon. Great little vignette of two people oppressed by eldritch powers, intersecting.

Hiatus by bibliocratic

My name is Jonathan Sims, and I am in Eskew. (Jon gets lost in a Spiral city. It is not as easy as escaping.)

This one is far more focused on Jon than David, and is honestly more Eskew-weird than Spiral-weird. In the best way. Told in Eskew episode style, and is very good.

Sweet Music by Shella688

Eskew has a music to it, if you know how to listen. The percussion beat of thousands of footsteps, the melody in the squealing of the trains overhead. Today, the music of Eskew comes in the form of nine musicians, playing outside my office. My name is David Ward, and I am in Eskew.

Not TMA, but since a lot of Mechs fans go here—this one’s a Mechs/Eskew crossover. Short and simple, mostly David Ward centric, just a little well-written one shot I had to mention because I enjoyed it but it doesn’t have much traffic. Nice portrayal of the Mechs from an outsider’s perspective, and how genuinely strange and frightening they’d come across (especially if you’re already being haunted by and eldritch city). If you like Eskew-style storytelling, check it out!

NOT TMA

...but good enough that I physically cannot make a recs list without including them. Here!

[vr2]

i think kaeya’s suffocating one-way loyalty to others, especially diluc, is one of my favourite parts of his character. an inhumanly knightly ideal stretched transparent, gauze-thin to try and obscure the deficit of your own personhood. like clawing shut a black hole with bloodied fingers but still finding it weeping uncontrollably, hysterically. it’s not exactly self-sacrifice but more like some ill-fated way of seeking validation, plunging yourself into the dark to reaffirm that there is something light, barely alive, faintly flickering within. something worth saving, something human after all. its knowingly asking a question that cannot be answered or taken back. an irreversible change of state is the culmination of rubedo, the metamoprhic stage preceding it symbolized by the peacocks tail, cauda pavonis. understanding the true weight of flesh without blood is to kill the creature beforehand, but this is the only way a true value can be known. childhood dreams denature into scar tissue, charred memories leave a bitter taste in your mouth no matter what you wash it down with. twisting the knife to feel agony once more, confirmation there was some soft underbelly to to the beast, still made of blood and bone, steel carapace and blood-dark claws nothing more than bygone idles. this body can catch alight, can burn brilliantly. this maddening fragility can only be human.

an enduring but deceptively frail nature. i think most of his potential as a character is just waiting for him to shatter and reveal what exactly is left underneath it all like a kinder surprise! but the surprise is abject misery compounded upon whatever fucking awful events would have to cause him to break cleanly in two. i think, naturally, if left to his own devices with little change other than his tentative limbo with diluc, the niggling fear of his truth being exposed and his true utter loneliess, rather than breaking, kaeya would slowly be eroded with time. already well entrenched in the safety of his masks in the city he all but rules, slowly the glaciers hes built turn into the sea and without realising it one day he’d be stranded in an ocean of his own making completely and utterly desolate. eventually kaeya will find himself swalloed by the abyss and he will not struggle as the water comes to claim him.

as fun as that is i think there are much more interesting avenues to go down. for all kaeya is mond’s glacial cavalry captain he’s paradoxically also characterised by his emotional vulnerability. and i just think it’s delicious to prey on that and have some extreme emotional distress that tears him apart. although it’s never alluded to ingame outside of jean’s story quest it seems that kaeya orchestrates a lot of things and is relatively deeply involved with the personal lives of many characters who could not particularly offer him anything in return. specifically jean, klee, lisa and amber. somehow slowly he has scraped together some semblance of friendship and camraderie if not outright family. with him being abandoned twice over, one more final abandonment making kaeya compeltely lose all sense of reality would utterly break him for the last time. like realising all this time, all this change, everything yous aid and did was not only pointless but it was a distraction. the ice beneath your feet is is cracking even if you screamed for help you’d simply be damning another person to die with you, selfishly, thoughtlessly, cruelly. realising your purpose was nothing so grand, but with lies and misdirection they sent you to die in the snow convincing yourself a martyr. there is nothing to catch you, nothing to hold onto but whatever is lurking beneath. you can at least trust a beast to be beast, you were denied to live amongst the land of men but in the depths of the abyss you monsters you call your kin reach out to you, knowing. its only a matter of control now, to either fall off of the edge of the world or dive into it.

like a bird trying to swim beneath the water and finally succumbing to the waves. abandon yourself to your fate. revel in it, drink it down in huge gulps, fall into the spiral and dont look up, don’t acknowledge any other ending than this. there is no use making wishes, the stars are not listening.

i think the event that makes kaeya lose his tenuous grip on reality will actually be completely unnoticeable to anyone who doesnt particularly know him ie other than maybe jean, rosaria and diluc. kaeya will not endanger mond directly, but he is aware, that when he falls, so does a pillar of mond’s defence. he will not raise his sword against the place that gave him a wonderful illusion of belonging but he will not save it either, there was no way for him to understand this land of wind, as someone who was born not knowing the sky.

kaeya would mostly act as usual but there’s something distinctly off-kilter. his usual teasing more strange and obtuse, his usual silvertongue tempered into something more humble, cut with a strange truthfulness, a quiet gentleness of a youth from long ago. as if the captain had suddenly turned back time, as if slowly opening up and blooming like a flower. jean is happy to see kaeya smile again, even if she knows it if an affectation of a memory of a memory. she feels like the anemo archon had gifted him wings, this lightness a blessing she should be thankful for rather than weighed down with niggling worry for her oldest friend. rosaria finds it rather liberating, feeling as if kaeya has finally had the strength to shake off the great weight he carried, that burdensome melancholy has finally thawed. if it was not for the face master diluc is making at him however, she might have missed how wide and unseeing that smile seems.

diluc would be torn. there is something wrong with kaeya. but at the same time isn’t this what he wanted? perhaps in another life if kaeya ragnivindr had the chance to grow up, to bloom into adulthood, this is what he’d be. there is a childish softness he had thought he had burned away, the specter of a boy from another life warm and real before you. that makes something in his throat catch, the back of his eyes ache. diluc would feel tormented, kaeya surely had found some peace but here diluc has convinced himsef its ill-gotten. theres a warring inside him of wanting to reach out and hold this person you’ve never seen before, lest the disappear like snow come dawn and at the same time dig your fingers into it, sift through it until its in pieces before you and find what must exist in the heart of this illusion, even if it means tearing it to pieces. its often, often, he curses demanding the truth. honor and code and chivalry mean nothing any more but he has chosen the path and he can no longer go back. because now it means he cannot leave this kaeya, who can at least pretend to smile like he used to, intact. even this short reprieve must be burnt away.

questioning kaeya is painful, he uses his truthful emotions to disarm and its impossible to get anywhere. kaeya knows what hes doing. if he must be a liar to the end, he will give them the grandest, most beautiful illusion he can create. he pulls on his own strings until he feels them dig into skin, closing around his throat. choking down all his childish wishes to be saved, and turning once more to the audience. smothering it is the kinder alternative than to let the small voice in his heart live, take pitiful struggling steps and have to watch it fizzle and die out with a whimper under the weight of the world. the show must go on, such a mundane performance is not worthy of the king of khaenriah.

kaeya has always known that no matter how he comes to the finale, he has his part to play. in the end his choices dont matter, nobody has ever let kaeya have anything but (a photograph set alight by the fireplace. black satin ribbons tied in neat loopy bows, order in unruly heads of hair, scratchy facial hair against your cheek, the smell of cologne and grapes, not yet wine, three bodies curled on an armchair, a book of fairy tale held in two sets of hands. there is hole is in the center). his body has always belonged to khaenriah, his sword to the knights of favonius, his life to mond. there a quiet vindictive selfishness still, of owning and having complete control of your heart. one ill retaliation that gurgles out of your throat and takes the form of half-aborted laughter spilling out like tar, like sickness. turning the world upside down and righting your positions. kaeya sets the board to its rightful place.

is it still falling if you jump? no need to fear of someone letting go, if you had no intention of holding on. one final indulgence, one last rebellion. the childish vindictiveness of taking something from someone and not giving it back, getting the last laugh even if you laugh alone.

the peacock stage in alchemy, is the stage of transcendence, to destroy the original form and purify it to its final rubedo. the peacock must be swallowed by the phoenix. burning through its brilliant colours to achieve the transmutation between the mundane and divine. this is the the purpose of the cauda pavonis. it is to represent a form that is to be destroyed to achieve completion. a sacrifice.

to kaeya, knowing his purpose yet still foolishly living beyond it is the thing that truly truly sinks its teeth in. knowing that everything he built will be destroyed and he must allow it for being foolish enough to build it in the first place. he knows his impermanence and yet still he is beside himself with a festering rage called humanity creeping into his bones. having no way to process this as anything other than some inherent malignant evil that must be intrinsic to himself, i think kaeya takes ‘pleasure’ in not only burning that bridge but proving to everyone that he was an awful person who deserved this and he really is getting the last laugh. and truly there is something about it, for once, destroying something for your own pleasure. even if it is taking your own chance of redemption, that weak-hearted hopefulness and crushing it between your teeth, finding your saviour just to spite their naivety. the onyl thing left ot destroy is yourself so kaeya will make it absolute and spectacular! a performance seen this night and never again.

but the just straight up sacrifice for the sake of devotion, feeling as if he truly has nothing left but himself and he is his own person to destroy, his only act he can take, the only move on the board is sexy too. in another world, those deeper desires never breaking the ice, layers of permafrost scarred over and scratched raw - idle fantasies of love and forgiveness and belonging, mundane dreams reserved for better people - that could not be burnt out of you that night, like your hair, like your hands, like your flesh, like your heart. an ashen taste that lingers, a bitter aftertaste ever present no matter what you try and wash it down with. you can at least appreciate that the ache of your lungs filling with water, with wine, with the heavy weight of lies -- you can imagine you will sink, heavy with this grief. no one can change this punishment you have decided for yourself, they cannot save you without your consent. you see an invitation to be smothered, for your death to have a purpose, just as your life and birth had predetermined value, how could you deny such a privilege?

what is this if not a final act of devotion? to who, it’s undecided. but the fact you have burnt through this life for others, that you have bled for them, have been their hope, perhaps with this you can finally earn the title of a good man in their eyes. but your own dull gaze is the only one that looks back at you.

to think of their faces, their names, their warmth would sully this divine duty with pointless sorrow so you would close your eyes and clutch at the chest, where an abyssal heart would beat fast and scared, a betrayer and coward til the end. in the cold water, the outline of a dream, the gauzy silhouettes of people you loved, the light of the sun cast shadows across lands both alien and comforting, and, and - anything at all would be worth it. anyone but you.

perhaps this is simply the end. the final act lay unwritten for there is no point writing words that will never be read. perhaps the mask has slipped and you never noticed, insisting the show must go on when there is no one to play to. a performer perpetually stuck on the stage, turning about the head of a pin, boring into you with every revolution. 

the depths of the abyss, pale in comparison to a gaping maw of this despair so wide, that this ocean is nothing but shallow waters to you. walking into the sea, with sword in hand, a sickness in the form of a love that is incomprehensible and cold. to finally rest free, a sojourn with no hope of return a voyage to far away from here. kaeya alberich falls to the end of the world and you will not save him.

as well and good all this rambling is, i think my favourite rendition of kaeya alberich shattering into tiny little pieces is to the tune of ‘kelly clarkson - since u been gone’

[inumaqi]

top ten tagged by @linkspooky 🍊 explanations under the cut! sorry for rambling xo → rules: name your top ten favourite characters from ten different fandoms, and then tag ten people - @osomanga @kara-suno @anonimarevolts @zeninmaki @wildbishonen @shysheeperz @tkmewthyou @kaldurlenn @joxterism @marshmallowdonutsprinkles

snufkin okay so he’s the only one not from an anime or manga but i had to put him on bc he’s the most important fictional character to me, ever. i grew up watching the moomin cartoons in the 90s and thinking about it instantly calms me down - they used to air the episodes early in the morning when it would still be dark outside: the landscapes were moody and cosy, the characters were so softly spoken and articulate... it’s just peak nostalgia. anyway, snufkin is moomin’s best friend; he returns to moominvalley every year to be with his friends during the spring and says his goodbyes to go adventure again come winter. it upsets moomin when he leaves but snufkin is adamant that quiet and solitude are important and healthy, and it’s not fair to expect him to compromise on his independence - that made a really big impact on me as a kid, especially as someone who never really had their ‘own’ space (twinsies). relationships aren’t weakened by physical distance or time, they’re about communication and understanding. that was important too. i don’t think i realised just how influential it had been until i was an adult but snufkin is an anarchist. he first shows up in the comics when moomin and sniff are talking about opening a bank - he tells them they should plant fruit trees instead. he destroys private property and rescues orphans, he refuses to participate in things that don’t bring him joy. when he’s asked where home is, he replies, “nowhere. or everywhere! it depends how you look at it” - the whole world belongs to him, and the whole world belongs to everyone else too.

yomo renji in general, i like characters that trudge along in the background and do the nitty-gritty work that supports the main story. i like people like that irl too. more than anything else, yomo is desperate to form human connections, even though he’s shackled by self-doubt and self-loathing. he just wants to positively contribute to a community, thinking he’s most useful keeping a quiet eye on people who might need protection/guidance (while still giving them space to grow and act themselves) or foraging for human corpses so that others aren’t in danger or moral anguish doing it for themselves.

bird boy is a total weapon - “the perfect ghoul” - and you’re reminded over and over again but a lot of his growth is about rejecting violence and repurposing his power as something productive that he can use to help the people around him instead of hurting people (the yang to uta’s yin). in the first few chapters, he says he kills humans (he’s a ghoul, humans are food, it’s natural) and yet he’s consistently framed as a scavenger who seeks out ‘roadkill’ [suicide victims] for sustenance, even before coming to anteiku, and implements a system so other people can do the same.

suguru getou i was originally gonna say meg bc i love him but, having just finished The Flashback Arc, i can’t stop thinking about getou and i’m beyond impressed with how akutami has managed to ground him so well, so sympathetically. getou is the sick, warped darkness to the hopeful light that gojou commands but... in an uncomfortable twist, the reverse is true, kind of.

actually, gojou is arrogant and confrontational and hyper individualistic. he’s a dissident. getou is obedient, compassionate, self-aware... he has a sense of social responsibility and passionately believes that his skills should be used to protect those who can’t protect themselves - non-jujutsu sorcerers - and all of the suffering he endures as a result is worth that. idk if others are reading his downfall differently but, from where i’m standing, that overwhelming responsibility never goes away, he doesn’t give up on it - he just starts to view the social landscape differently and begins to see how jujutsu sorcerers are vilified and mistreated in spite of all the good that they do. the ‘weak’ aren’t really weak when they’re able to organise and assert collective power over a minority, and so his sympathies shift.

the nail in the coffin for getou is learning that the hurt and pain could be eradicted from the world by cutting the head of the proverbial snake: non-jujutsu users generate cursed energy, so get rid of non-jujutsu users and cursed energy won’t be generated. it’s all horribly, weirdly rooted in good intentions that weigh him down and misdirect him.  shinazugawa genya i feel like the bond that slowly starts to develop betwen tanjirou, and zenitsu and inosuke (in particular) is nicely foiled by genya’s lonely journey towards becoming a pillar. after losing almost all of his family and having sanemi walk away, genya is angry, antisocial, rude, violent, evasive...

he’s characterised as competitive, as if he hates his peers and wants to leave them in the dust as an act of self-satisfaction, a power fantasy or whenever, but this is a deliberate misdirection to cover for the fact that he’s scrambling to be a pillar so that he can reconnect with his brother and prove to him that he can protect himself; that sanemi doesn’t need to shoulder everything alone like he used to. his entire goal is an act of apology.

and in a story where so many characters are able to hone these exceptional skills, genya is uniquely disadvantaged as the only one who can’t master breathing techniques. rather than having a hero moment and powering up, his need to reconnect with sanemi is so strong that he essentially decides to compromise his humanity and become a kind of monster by ingesting the demons he’s pledged to annihilate. amajiki tamaki i wish i had a a longer explanation for this one but it’s actually super simple: tamaki is a really, really, really good portrayal of a person burdened with severe anxiety. the way he physically carries himself, the way he hides his face, his manner of speaking, his dependency on his mirio, how he interprets compliments as trickery, how he needs to be pushed and pushed and pushed before he’s finally able to release his potential... every single scene with tamaki felt deeply personal when i was reading bnha and i knew exactly what he was supposed to be feeling. shinmon benimaru sometimes good, nice people don’t fit a little friendly mould and i like that benimaru is hostile and rough and antisocial, even with people he cares about. he doesn’t expect anything of people, he doesn’t want them interfering with him, and he wants to help and support them all the same because he believes in community. he’s completely oppositional to the special fire force because he thinks it’s a tool to pursue an ideology rather than to protect people, which is why it’s so important when the eighth are finally able to win his approval - they become the only company the seventh consider allies, and it’s proof that their objectives are righteous. despite his reputation as... kind of a nuisance, his skill is acknowledged by everyone and he’s universally regarded as the strongest fire soldier there is. in spite of his antisocial attitude, he agrees that it’s important to share that with younger fire soldiers - he’s incredibly patient and understanding with them, helps them to individually adapt. the way he (and others in company seven) operate in contrast to the other companies when fighting infernals is really cool to me for two reasons: (1) it provides a commentary on how cultures and traditions often struggle to survive when they’re systematically (forcefully) replaced through power and wealth - although the subtext is a little troubling because it’s unclear whether ōkubo is conflating multiculturalism with globalisation which, uh, big nope; and (2) philosophically speaking, the approach to death is interesting. where the other companies essentially perform last rites and offer absolution to the deceased, benimaru personally takes responsibility - at the request of the people in his district - for sending them off in huge public display, kind of like a festival intending to celebrate their life. i think it speaks to how profoundly he values life. akihiko kaji i liked akihiko from the beginning because he’s stoic and introspective and also excitable and dumb. he’s a people watcher and waits for opportunities to softly guide uenoyama and mafuyu when they’re quietly crying out for help but doesn’t interfere any more than he thinks is necessary because he knows they can make their own way to where they need to go. i liked akihiko even more when he got really fucking messy. his relationship with ugetsu is sweet and it’s incredibly ugly and unhealthy because they both fail utterly to communicate with one another - they’re both to blame for avoiding and hurting each other, and i think that’s a really normal issue that people find difficult to overcome. i’m super interested (and really nervous) to see how his relationship with haruki develops. he’s done some horrible things to haruki and i want him to be accountable for those things and have them affect their relationship in a realistic way.

tanigaki genjirou one thing i really, really love about golden kamuy is the way noda satoru incorporates the importance of minority cultures into the story, and tanigaki’s apparent abandonment of his matagi heritage is really beautifully written. matagi hunting traditions shaped his life as a young man, it’s how he was able to really assimilate to the people around him and form relationships and - without getting too spoilery - he divorces himself from it all when he’s overcome by grief and hatches a plan for revenge against the person responsible. so, by allowing himself to surrender to negative feelings and thoughts instead of seeking support and learning to heal from what happened, he becomes a total shadow of himself. 

makimura takeshi i know i’ve gushed about it before but i can’t properly explain just how incredible it felt seeing an asexual character in manga dialogue about being asexual, and devils’ line does it twice. the reason i’m so attached to makimura in particular is because he doesn’t seem to have fully figured it out - and he’s kinda... comfortable with that. he wants to be with someone and he wants to be monogamous but he can’t understand why he doesn’t feel sexual desire towards her; he knows his feelings aren’t platonic but doesn’t know whether they can really be called romantic either.

not to go dark mode but i very vividly remember just how lonely and horrifying it was battling with those uncertainties when i was a teenager, thinking i was broken because i didn’t have Normal Human Feelings and needed to be fixed. i was so worried about it that i thought about all the boys i knew, picked the one i thought was the nicest and actively tried to develop a crush on him. it was dumb as fuck but, ten years later, i realise it was really desperate and sad too. i forced myself to have ~my first kiss~ (it was horrible) because i felt like i was getting left behind and i think i would’ve put myself in worse situations as i got older if i hadn’t suffered with such bad social anxiety.

i hadn’t really thought too much about a lot of this stuff for yeaaars but it all came flooding back when i was reading devils’ line. it was bittersweet bc i was remembering all of those shitty feelings but also watching this character grapple with those same questions and go: i don’t know yet and that’s not weird, let’s just grow with it. i still don’t totally know whether i’m ace or aro or bi, or whatever, but i’m trying to be okay with just... not knowing.

misora shuuji anyway, devils’ line isn’t actually a manga with a specific focus on sexuality and gender but shimanami tasogare is and all of the characters are written beautifully. if you haven’t read it yet... then why haven’t you read it yet? misora is only about twelve years old and watching them battle with their growing pains is really compelling - they’re closeted but, through the lounge, they have somewhere to explore their gender and all the questions they have about it. they’re amab and present as traditionally feminine wrt clothes, wigs, makeup, etc. but can’t quite tell if they see themselves as a girl, a boy or non-binary.

with the onset of puberty and anxieties about physical changes to their body, misora’s story puts a lot of emphasis on the pressure they face to just ‘make up their mind’ about something that’s actually incredibly complex and doesn’t have any easy answers. they snap and shout and get upset, especially when tasuku (the protag) tries to push them into a corner because he wants a concrete label or identity he can attach to misora, even though space is exactly what misora needs.

[inwardphae]

Not my Steve (please share!)

Alright, it took me three days to digest Avengers: Endgame enough to be able to write this rant and it’s SOLELY about Steve Rogers. Please, read and share if you agree ‘cause I believe that there are things that Marvel should be made aware of. 

Thanks for the help, love you all xx Obviously, spoilers from now on.

First thing I wanna say is that I loved the movie, I found it a great homage and the rightful conclusion after 11 years of movies, and the right conclusion for so many characters with their specific arc and personal development (never been a fan of Tony Stark, but I truly appreciated his arch in the movie). Except for Steve Rogers. Here’s why.

I found Steve splendid and so well made throughout the whole movie, him trying to help others to move on but at the same time being unable to do it himself exactly because Steve is Steve, because of what he represents. I LOVED the fact that they let him hold Mjolnir -honestly, it was long overdue.  (There’s a bit of a debate about whether or not he should have been able to call the lightning: we know that both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker are catalysts that help Thor direction his own lightning, and in that sense Steve shouldn’t be able to do it. But it’s also true that in the first Thor Odin said “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor”.)

But let’s get to the true problem, the absolute bullshit, the denial of 10 years of work on the character: THE ENDING. There are literally tons of reasons why this conclusion doesn’t work, let’s start from the more obvious ones. And please, note that I’m saying all this not because I personally ship Stucky -I doubt that any Stucky shipper in their right mind would have expected for it to become canon, honestly-, I’m saying his because I’m a person with eyes and that’s enough to realize that there’s something terribly wrong with this choice. Regardless of whatever I wanted or hoped for Steve in this movie.

I find this conclusion an utter and complete disservice to a character who’s had his arc and a specific characterisation: it negates all the efforts, the pain, all the space in the world that Steve managed to carve out for himself in the 21st century. It’s a disservice to Peggy who loses her autonomy as a character, who loses her personal history -we know from TWS that she was married, with kids at least a niece that we know of, she lived her life. It’s a disservice to her own words “none of us can go back, sometimes the only thing we can do is start over”- WHICH, just to remind everyone, was also a quote used in one of the Endgame teasers. I’m saying all this despite the fact that I personally appreciated Peggy very much and despite having loved Peggy and Steve together at the times of TFA. And moreover, after all the pain, the family that Steve managed to create for himself, the battles he fought, what does Steve do? He goes back? He goes back instead of going forward? Steve, “the kid from Brooklyn too dumb not to run away from a fight”, Steve fucking Rogers RUNS AWAY and goes back to the past? Steve denies himself, abandons everyone and goes to the past? No way, no fucking way. I swear I’ve never seen so much OOC in one scene.

There’s also the problem of the potential huge plot hole. There are two options: let’s break it down.

Option 1: Steve goes back to the 1950s, marries Peggy and, as suggested by the timetravel theory used in the whole movie, he creates an alternative timeline to the main one where they live together. And where he (presumably, I hope) goes to save Bucky to prevent 70 years of torture, brainwashing and conditioning, and to prevent the reconstruction of Hydra. Then again, presumably after Peggy’s death in this alternative timeline, he travels through the quantic realm again and gets back to the main timeline where he meets Sam and Bucky. Problems with this option? Well, it doesn’t contradict the timetravel theory of the movie, but there’s still the problem of the other Steve in the alternative timeline, who’s currently frozen in the Arctic. What happens to him?

Option 2: Steve goes back to the 1950s, marries Peggy, he doesn’t create a different timeline and simply lives his life to the point that he meets with Sam and Bucky in 2023, as it seems to be suggested by the fact that Steve is already there, sitting on the bench, when Bucky spots him. He doesn’t get there through the portal. Problems with this option? TONS. First of all, it contradicts the whole timetravel theory of the movie (see above), it implies that at some point Old Steve and Young Steve must have coexisted, and especially it implies that Steve radically changed the past. If he marries Peggy, Peggy doesn’t marry her husband, and the whole future should change. Does it mean that Steve has been Peggy’s husband all along, like in a time loop? Then does it mean that he kissed his own nephew? Sharon *coughs* Carter? As you can see, there are HUGE problems with this option.

But let’s move on from these incongruences for the moment and let’s get to the other utter bullshit: BUCKY BARNES (how handsome was Sebastian Stan in the three seconds that he was on camera by the way?). Now, whether one believes that between Steve and Bucky there’s a romantic interest or just a platonic, brotherly love, it doesn’t really matter. Bucky and Steve’s dynamic has been the focus of the whole Captain America trilogy, and there’s no denying that. Steve, when he tries to distract his double in the 2012 timeline, says “Bucky’s alive”, and honestly that’s the most honest moment dedicated to their relationship, and Bucky wasn’t even there! They drowned us for a whole trilogy with “I’m with you till the end of the line” moments, and the only thing that they leave us with, and the very end, it’s a come back from the first movie with “Don’t do anything stupid until you get back” and the famous reply “How could I? You’re taking all the stupid with you”, and THAT’S IT? Steve goes to live his life and all the best to everyone? Not even a word once he comes back as Old Steve, he’s just there to pass the shield to Sam?  Bucky, the best friend of a lifetime? Bucky for whom Steve fights against the Avengers? Bucky for whom he’s ready to die, Bucky for whom he’d sacrifice himself thousands of times? Bucky for whom he stormed into a Hydra base without proper training and without even knowing if his friend was alive? Bucky for whom he gave up the shield not once, but twice? No way. No fucking way.

This is not about appreciating Bucky and Steve and their dynamic or not, this is about the absurd choice of denying the entire arc of two characters that occupied the space of a whole trilogy. But why?

And come on, Steve’s at least a hundred years old, probably about to die, and they don’t even exchange a few words? I could have handled something like “Hey pal, we made it to the end of the line", I could have lived with that. But not this way. Some part of me tries to think that if anything, at least Steve got to come home from the war. He lived his life. But it’s so terribly wrong, and Steve would never deny himself and his choices, and not because he can’t live without a war, but because he’s always been true to himself. And he would never leave Bucky behind to go back in time and live a life with a woman that -let’s be honest- he knew for two years back in the 40s and with whom he’s already got closure after her death in CA:CW. He moved on. And so did Peggy, to be perfectly honest. Let’s all remind ourselves how utterly destroyed Steve was after Bucky’s ‘death’ and how much he blamed himself: his guilt is literally what moves the two following movies. But the Russos decided to ignore this.

It’s such a horrible thing to do and it’s so unfair that I feel like I want to cry again. And in all of this, Steve didn’t even die, he’s not dead but he doesn’t even get a closure that works for his character. He’s still there, but he’s not really there anymore, is he? And for all those who keep saying how nice is that he got to dance with Peggy, sure it’s nice. But then you really don’t know Steve Rogers at all.

In conclusion, I loved the movie and I’m totally happy with it as a farewell to the MCU as we know it, as a farewell to characters like Tony and Natasha. The only discordant note, sadly, is Steve and his dynamic with Bucky. I don’t know if the Russos did it cause the shipping fandom made them uncomfortable, and honestly, I don’t even want to know. It’s just something that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive Marvel for. And they need to know.

#notmysteve

[heartslobbf]

why ‘the deathsong of uther pendragon’ is the greatest merlin episode to ever merlin

in march of this year, i stumbled across a compilation of funny merlin clips in my youtube recommendations. i clicked on it, amazed that a show i watched ages five through eight, every autumn on bbc with an enthusiasm unmatched by any other show i watched, still had such a booming fandom. it was in early april that i made the decision to give into nostalgia and rewatch the whole thing with my mum, because i missed the silly show with troll weddings and ghost hauntings that made me cry so damn hard on christmas eve nonetheless.

the first thing i did after watching the first episode was hunt down my two favourite episodes. i was pretty happy to discover that the beauty and the beast was in series two, because i remember that two parter was what really made me love merlin as a child. but by the time i’d scanned through series three and four too, i finally found it: the deathsong of uther pendragon, 05x03, my favourite episode and the first thing i think of when someone says ‘merlin’ to me.

i love this episode so damn much. the scene with gwen in the hallway haunted me as a child, it was inexcplicable how i could love it so much. but i did. i loved the ghosts and i loved the mystery, and yeah, it was a really funny episode, but it made me get a little bit emotional at the end.

like, don’t get me wrong. it’s a dumb episode. it seems almost out of place, a sudden and drastic break away from all of the doom and gloom, from arthur’s bane. homoerotic ghost hunting poetry lessons, the knights being the knights, a silly and irrelevant episode that serves as comedic relief in such a dark series. but this episode is important, and heartwarming, and without it i’d feel as though uther’s arc was never completed.

arthur is deeply affected by his father’s death, both because of the circumstances and the fact that he felt close to him. but uther practically disowns arthur during their confrontation at the beginning of the episode, all because of how he’s running the kingdom. uther never approved of gwen, ever. he tried to have her executed for various reasons over the first few series, so it’s not like he even liked her. and there was always the issue of nobility, the whole classism thing that was well addressed in both gwaine and lancelot’s first episodes. uther doesn’t approve of anything arthur has done during his time as king, he brushed aside all of the good, the peace and the prosperity, because he feels as though arthur is going to change things.

uther is scared of change. in fact, uther is scared of almost everything. and his fear is what drives him, a cowardly and tyrannical man, to distrust everything and everyone, from a passive tool like magic to even his own family. i think that uther sees arthur’s openness to equality as a sign, a sign that magic might return. the trouble is that instead of reminding arthur of all the evil magic has done, instead of trying to convince his son of the values he raised him on, uther immediately resorts to violence.

arthur says he loves gwen. he says his knights are some of the best he’s ever had. he refuses to let his father do what he always did in life: get his way. during uther’s reign, he could shape arthur however he wanted to, order him around, force his ideals upon his son and make him force them upon others. but arthur’s friends question him, help him make tough decisions, and encourage him to think for himself, not as his father would.

04x05 is an incredibly important episode because of the scenes between arthur and his friends. that development in his character is what allows him to disagree with his father in 05x03, and uther hates it. he doesn’t want arthur to form his own views on the world as he already has, because with every new choice he makes, he gets closer and closer to fulfilling his destiny as the once and future king who returned magic to albion. uther doesn’t know about that, sure, but he certainly has an inkling his son will sympathise with magic users. and he’s right.

so, as i said before, uther resorts to violence. he’s a man controlled by fear, so of course he tries to use fear to control arthur. and whilst it never ceases to piss me off that uther actually tried to murder the two sweetest people in camelot (uther pendragon leave gwen and percival the fuck alone challenge), it’s nowhere near as important as what happens with merlin and arthur.

the second confrontation between father and son is heartbreaking. amidst all of it, though, this is the most important exchange:

ARTHUR: Then you will have to kill me. I am not you, Father. I can't rule the way you did.

UTHER: Camelot must come before all else. Even you.

uther is willing to kill his own son to preserve his legacy, to maintain this tyrannical and harsh rule. their relationship has completely and utterly broken down. arthur is realising now that his father has just lied to him, again and again and again, about his mother and about the values of a good king and everything else. it’s like in 02x08, when arthur says he no longer thinks of uther as a father, but this time there is no salvation for the sins of the father (i’m a comedic genius). uther has never really cared about arthur for who arthur is, but rather for who he wanted arthur to be.

and in 05x03, arthur is the last character in the entire show to realise this.

the deathsong of uther pendragon is intrinsically important, because without it, arthur will never fully reject his father and actually be open to the idea of bringing back magic. and seeing this, as an end to uther’s arc, to the end of arthur’s daddy issues, is sort of reminiscent of the umbrella academy to me, in the sense that arthur is like ‘shit, my dad isn’t a good person.’ he’s been in denial for a really long time about the extent of uther’s abusive nature, and this is the moment he stops. i love to poke fun of merlin, especially the fifth series, for some dodgy writing and dumb characterisation, but this episode just brings me to tears every time.

it’s the best merlin episode to ever merlin, because it does what the show sets out to do: show us arthur’s progression, with merlin’s help, to becoming the great king he’s supposed to be. and it does so hilariously, masterfully, beautifully, and with fucking ghosts and, of course, merlin and arthur’s several homoerotic subtexts. i love it. i love it so much.

[mrmallardsmobileposts]

How I Think The Star Wars Sequels Should Have Happened: Another MrMallard Nerd Moment

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

The Force Awakens:

fine jumping on point. Not perfect, but honestly a return to form in regards to making Star Wars movies fun again. Keep TFA as-is, warts and all - the trick is paying this movie off by the end.

The Last Jedi:

Less faux-Guardians of the Galaxy humor. That's not to say "no humor", I honestly thought Luke Skywalker had the best jokes of the movie, but less "your mother" and less "Finn wakes up from a coma and drips IV fluid everywhere, Wakka Wakka!". The former is corny, the latter is undignified and actively cheapens character development from the prior movie.

Cut the stampeding race-beasts, because it reeks of Disney's "fuck you we're Disney" money, but keep Canto Bight as a whole. The alien designs are charming - it's a nice moment of fanservice, along with the Jizz music. It also serves as a nice character-building exercise for Rose and Finn.

Ultimately, I think it might have been a better idea to kill off Leia in this movie considering Carrie Fisher's passing. I don't dislike her in this movie, and I honestly enjoyed the scene of her in space - my first thought was "holy fuck she can use the force!!" - but I think it would have been better for her to pass on in this movie, both logistically and for her character. That, or they should have scaled back her cobbled together Frankenstein-performance of CGI, cut lines and recontextualised footage in TRoS. Either/or.

Keep the mutiny plot with Poe, but something has to be done with how they treat the secret plan. The resolution to the mutiny plot was the thing that bothered me the most with TLJ, but it's pretty much the only thing for Poe to do in the movie and it adds conflict to the main story I guess. Making the Holdo/Poe seem a little less personal might help? idk. honestly a lot of this storyline felt forced.

Don't try and resolve Rey's backstory in this movie. Keep it as a running mystery. I understand that they were trying to go for a clever subversion in this movie, but it just added another stupid thing that TRoS bad to address and it honestly kinda ruins the trilogy.

Honestly, either cut Crait entirely and make it the beginning of the next movie - bc the movie's already two hours long and it feels like the final battle stretches the movie out beyond its natural ending point - or shorten it a bit and make it a bit more functional. It looks cool, but at that point it's like tacking an extra mile onto a marathon.

Also, don't shoehorn a failed heroic sacrifice with Finn imo. That, or give him more screentime and character development to build up to that moment. Post-TFA, he's really half-baked, and I honestly think he should have been more of a focal character next to Rey. The heroic sacrifice felt like it came out of nowhere, and by thwarting it and adding the Rose Tico scene, it felt like a waste of time even having it in there. It comes and goes with no fanfare.

Honestly, I would have preferred if Luke stayed alive at the end of the movie. I think his death was a movie too soon. Saying that, I think they nailed his death in this movie - if they were gonna kill him off, I think they did it right. Also, don't kill off Snoke. It's a cool scene, but it fucks up the next movie.

Re: Rose Tico - she's not my favorite part of the movie, but I don't actively hate her and I think the response to her character that Kelly Marie Tran had to face was absolutely disgusting. I think her plotline with Finn was a little underbaked, and that scene at the end where she prevents his heroic sacrifice just kinda sidelines them both. I think making her a navigator would have helped her character in TLJ and TRoS.

In short: trim a few excessive CGI scenes, cut a few cornball jokes out, play around with the characterisation and tone of the mutiny plot, dignify Finn's character instead of reducing him to a rehashed coward, comedic relief character and pointless failed Rebel martyr, and maybe keep Luke Skywalker alive at the end. Bring the movie in at around 2 hours max.

Keep Luke Skywalker as-is, bc his character is a highlight of TLJ.

The Rise of Skywalker:

Kill off Luke Skywalker in this movie. Seriously, just cut and paste his death at the end of TLJ into this movie. Work him into a reduced role when Rey junks her ship, like the force projection messed him up and he doesn't have much longer to live, and have him help her when she returns to his island planet instead of adding a phoned-in Force Ghost appearance. Maybe have her there when he passes?

Reduce Leia's role in this movie instead of stitching together a Frankenstein's Monster of a performance. Not to be morbid by that reference - it's just that everything she says feels so stilted and wrong, like you can definitely tell they've thrown all the scraps they have left into her character in this movie. It doesn't feel natural or respectful for her character to spit out non-sequiters for the characters to respond to in an equally unnatural sort of way.

Honestly? Canonise Fey/Rinn, however you want to portmanteau Rey and Finn's ship name. If you give Finn more of a character arc in TLJ instead of side-lining him, and establish that he and Rey are particularly close - which they are IMO - and then pay off that "I have something to tell you" beat with a confession of love. This isn't a stab against Reylo, though I've certainly had words to say about Reylo, I just think Finn/Rey is a more wholesome ship and I prefer this dynamic to the fuckin dark side/light side paradigm of Reylo. I Just don't care for it. Kylo Ren's conflicted nature doesn't have to resolve in romance. Gimme Rey/Finn.

Snoke gets offed by Palpatine. There's no breeding vat for Snokes, but if the movie wants to suggest that he's still just a puppet or a creation, that's fine. That, or build Snoke up as the bad guy, and either follow through on that or have Palpatine be a twist halfway through the movie.

Maybe make Palpatine a Sith Ghost? They do exist to some degree. Or have him stuck in some other limbo that requires him to hijack Rey. Anything is better than that "if I do this you do this, but then I'll do this so you would have to do this, but really I'm going to do this so either way my entire plan was completely unnecessary lmao" clusterfuck where he's a living corpse impaled on a robot arm.

Cut out the macguffins, or make them feel less inconsequential. Okay, so the dagger storyline involves rebooting C3PO. It has stakes and gravitas to a degree. Cool - keep that. What the fuck is up with the wayfinders though? Why are there only two? Why do they need to be so convoluted?

Maybe have Maz Kanata talk about Luke's lightsaber, and/or have her involved in finding a way to Palpatine. It would pay off her appearance in TFA and explain her importance to Luke.

By making Rose Tico a great navigator in TLJ, her role on the team can be expanded in TRoS and she can do like star charts and stuff for all the different worlds they're going to - she can come along instead of being fucked over by JJ Abrams in this movie. She can even help with Maz Kanata's wayfinding plan. In short - make her a part of the team.

Honestly, fuck the Knights of Ren right off. They're a waste of time. That, or set them up in TLJ - hell, have one of them on Canto Bight and another one on Snoke's ship. Maybe even retcon Phasma into being a Knight of Ren. Anything but bringing them back as a mook squad in this movie, with no weight or character.

Honestly? Show Palpatine surviving the Death Star crash. The retcon is all the more painful for being completely and utterly unexplained. Doesn't matter if you have to touch the source material to do it, CG in a force shield as Palpatine falls through fire and have him hobble to a life support pod that takes him to where he is in TRoS. Literally anything is better than "Somehow, Palpatine returned".

Either cut the healing powers, or leave them in sans Reylo kiss.

In short: reduce Leia's role instead of using cut content and a CGI puppet to stitch together a performance, leave Luke alive until this movie, kill Snoke in this movie OR have him be the big bad, make Finn/Rey a thing over Reylo - again, no hate, I just prefer this pairing over Reylo - write more details about Palpatine's survival, either put some Knights of Ren into TLJ or don't have them at all, get rid of the Wayfinder macguffins and/or work Maz Kanata and "master navigator" Rose Tico into a plot to find Palpatine.

At the end of the day, there should have been a planning committee for the Star Wars story, not for the merchandise. You can see from how the sequel trilogy crammed out merchandise that Disney was clearly asking for marketable merch, but the story is a trainwreck - there was a Star Wars committee, just not where the property needed one.

The sequel trilogy was a worthwhile experiment imo - it didn't pay off, but it was worth doing just to see if it was possible. But even then, I would prefer three decent movies over a couple of experimental trainwrecks retroactively ruining one decent movie.

This post was mostly trying to work with what the movies already have, though by TRoS you really do have to start overhauling shit to make it work. In my eyes, the longest that these movies should run is two hours - any more than that is a slog, especially when the movie feels like it takes two hours. The Last Jedi felt like two and a half hours. The Rise of Skywalker felt like a two hour movie crammed into 80 minutes, despite the fact it was longer than 2 hours. The best way to make these movies more watchable is to make them shorter - cut out superfluous money shot scenes like the Canto Bight chase, have more efficient scenes to balance out the stylish scenes. The sequel trilogy is short on efficiency imo, and without a movie where it feels like progress is being made, the style doesn't work.

So tweak some things to make each movie more efficient.

[vedj-f-bekuesu]

At this point I’m just watching the seasons to keep the momentum going after two great (and one flawed but still okay) seasons. With Friday being a Bank Holiday, I might get the rest of the pre-11 stuff wrapped up by the weekend. But enough of the future, how about the season I watched, Sons of Garmadon?

It had a lot to live up to based on its reputation, and I’m happy to report that it delivers on what it sets out to do. Issues with the season are fairly minor tribbles, but that’s something I can cover in the notes.

-Hoo boy, let’s get this out of the way; the movie did fucking wonders for Lloyd Garmadon. Spending like five seasons stuck to his blander “chosen one must learn” characterisation, this season gives him a very long overdue overhaul into a more modern chosen one protagonist who is way more entertaining to watch. Bonus points for having a look I can take seriously now...yeah, sorry, but the Anakin hairpiece with the strange approach to voice commitment never did for me, even as it became the norm for what I was viewing.  -To be honest, his teammates get some good material here too. Some more than others (Zane especially has a really good little arc where he gets to show his more calculating side. Cole’s arc is okay but I don’t feel it quite nails the landing as well), but they all get chance to banter and have character moments, which is mainly what I come into shows for as opposed to straight up development constantly. Shout outs to Jay who has small moments, but important ones that do really good for his character (I could go into why Lloyd and Jay make the most sense as leads...probably after my season watching is done). I also like the callback to a character moment he had in season 3. Also this finally feels like the writers are sticking to characterisation, this season mostly keeping what Hands of Time did with them. Not so much design-wise, but I’ve made it clear many times that I prefer the new designs to old. Also, I get to throw in Pixal as a main character now since she’s clearly on the team full time. She’s good here too. -The dynamics get their own section just because I want to restate how I prefer the dynamic between Jay and Lloyd compared to Kai and Lloyd so far. Seriously, Jay seems to step up to bat for Lloyd more than Kai at this point. And yet no-one really seems to be interested in it within the fandom. -There wasn’t really much in the way of side characters this season (I am aware that next season will change that). Misako was good for what little material she had, Wu was fun and actually became a solid character in his own right once he became a toddler, Dareth is solid and really gets to show his alternative way of helping out, and the police commissioner...eh, better than season 6 but I’m still not big on him.  -I can sum up Harumi in one sentence; Skylor but done better on every count (and also evil). She’s engaging when she’s acting as the more humble Princess figure, and she’s nicely hammy when she’s unleashing her evil side. I can see why people would be into Lloyrumi with such a investing act (for the record, I’m not). This all being said, those who say that Harumi had a point are missing one important detail; as much destruction has been caused with the ninjas’ close call; what alternative is there? I don’t see anyone else stepping up to save Ninjago so it would have probably fully fallen a long time ago. And even with the Great Devourer, Lord Garmadon was channelling his good side to deliver a finishing blow, he still needed the ninja there.  -We have three other villains and two of them are enjoyable. Ultra-Violet is committed to her crazy shtick and amusing, and Killow is definitely different to how I thought he’d be, but it’s a lot more enjoyable (especially when Garry Chalk is channelling every bit of his Sonic Underground Robotnik voice he can. Kind of like how Clancee was Ian James Corlett channelling a lot of his scrub monkey third class). Mr E can go rust though.  -Unlike the other seasons which people cite as dark, this one feels like it does actually go there. It’s not completely a dark season, mostly the end of Jade Princess and scenes between Game of Masks and Big Trouble, Little Ninjago. It was still pretty fun and light-ish hearted outside of that. -Weirdly enough, most of my quibbles are on the technical side. People cite this season as having the best animation...but I don’t really see it. In terms of visuals it’s a step up, but the actual animation doesn’t feel that different to Hands of Time. They learned to use flashier graphics everywhere. Which is probably why the intro is the way it is, and I’m sorry but this is probably my least favourite intro. I can’t appreciate the spectacle when focusing on anything is difficult to achieve. On top of that, there were still some glaring graphical fuck-ups (like when Cole is shown with the other ninja in a scene where he was captured, or when Lloyd was shown with green eyes in a shot despite being drained of power at that point), which aren’t really any different to the ones Prime Empire has.  -The pacing of the season wasn’t entirely smooth, but unlike other seasons it’s not like one set issue. It’s more like a concertina effect; it was very quick at first, then slows down, then speeds up again, then slows down, then finally hits an even tempo about halfway through. This is why I didn’t mention the likes of Hutchins, the parents or the Mechanic before; because of the pace, you don’t really get enough time to really get attached to them (doesn’t help that the Mechanic has Alan Marriott doing the voice in his cameo, and man does it not fit compared to Skybound. I’m glad when the Mechanic got more substantial stuff they went back to his original VA, that voice is so fun).  -My other big thing is actually the complete continuity snarl that’s Harumi’s backstory makes. They’ve thrown in so many random events over the seasons but because of the sheer vagueness of the timescales it doesn’t really break suspension of disbelief. But Harumi’s turn to darkness is clearly during the ending of season 1, which we have a much more tangible sense of time for. Harumi seems like she’s about 8-10 then, the ninja seem like they were 14-15 then, Harumi seems like she’s 15-18 now but the showrunner still insist that the ninja are teenagers? How does that work, the most generous allowance for time is five years, and that would barely make them still teenagers in season 8. Certainly don’t believe they could be teenagers as of the most recent seasons. -On a completely different tangent, can we talk about the toilet humour? Yeah, it’s not like it’s never been there (there’s been poop jokes, fart jokes, halitosis jokes, and who can forget that one utterly cringe scene in S3?), but Hands of Time and Sons of Garmadon do it in a way that just comes off as really weird compared to earlier toilet humour. Like, there’s the implication by Jay in season 7 that Kai has issues with constipation, Cole’s truth tea dose forces him to say that he pees in the pool, and then there’s Kai, right to Harumi’s face, all but saying that Jay has issues with peeing himself. Her reaction to it is fucking hilarious, but it’s still weird, even though knowing Vincent Tong he would totally do that. 

Overall, this was a great season, and it’s clear to see how this became such a draw to the series (meaning in hindsight, LEGO’s method of dealing with the new style was pretty much a winner). The issues I have don’t stop the quality being across the board. Aside from Possession, I think this may be a favourite season from the pre-11 stuff. 

Next time, we effectively get the second part to this story. Yep, it ended in a cliffhanger so we’ve hardly wrapped it up here. Time to see how the OG ninja and newer recruits handle themselves alone in Hunted. 

[spectralscathath]

Blake Belladonna for the character ask?

Send me a character and I will tell you:

Blake Belladonna

First impression: I found her interesting enough, though my first impression was that her weapon was utterly bonkers and I loved that.

Impression now: Her weapon is still utterly bonkers, but is also underutilised and also that is not how you fix a weapon, that blade is going to snap the next time she uses it to block something, there’s a stress point right in the middle, just reforge the blade Blake. Her character’s about as functional as her weapon now is as well, unfortunately. Considering she was my favourite of the rwby girls for the longest time. Oh how the mighty fall.

Favorite moment: Her fight with Weiss at the end of volume 1! That was the moment where I saw just how much heart rwby truly had put into it, and I loved it. Their fight was interesting and personal and deep and while I wish Weiss had actually apologised for being an outright racist, I loved Blake.

Idea for a story: A story where she decides to go to Vacuo with her last braincell Sun and continue overcoming her trauma, instead of completely shutting herself off from her support system and going with team RWBY.

Unpopular opinion: Oof, probably that she’s an abuser? Sun got the worst of it, poor guy, considering she slapped and backhanded him, then destroyed his property, then right after he got fucking impaled because she was dithering around in a fight, he’s waking up in a daze and she’s yelling at him, making the situation all about her and her feelings, and towering over him with clenched fists and an aggressive stance. Aside from that, she did the same ‘make your bad experience all about me’ thing to Yang, and infantilised the shit out of her. Still, at least she had a character when she was pulling this crap. Now all of that is gone so we can have Giggly Cat GF who can’t do anything without Yang coming in to save her. Seriously, the big Ace Ops fight? RWBY’s big fight for the finale? She’s gotta be rescued like, twice, and only gets to pull off team attacks. Yeah. Guess all her characterisation and fighting skills were stored in the ends of her hair. 

Favorite relationship: Well, she’s very much a taker in her relationship with Sun, which is a shame because he’s so fucking supportive and validating of her and we’ve never seen her reciprocate. She’s a taker with Yang too, but her friendship with Weiss is probably her healthiest relationship, with both of them equally supportive of the other, and I wish that was allowed to exist a bit more. 

Favorite headcanon: That she tore her parents a fucking new one for letting a twelve-year-old join a cult? Actually, I headcanon her as loving cartography, both reading maps and making her own. She’s got some art skills, we’ve seen that, and I like to think that she enjoyed drawing out maps of her favourite fantasy worlds from books, and then that became a real life hobby. Coincidentally, she’s also an excellent navigator. 

Thanks Anon

[the-desolated-quill]

BBC’s The War Of The Worlds blog - Episode 3

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

You know, people often ask me why I get so angry when I’m reviewing BBC shows. I mean yes I give Disney and Marvel a hard time too, but they don’t get nearly as much bile and venom as I give the BBC. Well that’s because, unlike Disney and Marvel, BBC shows are funded by the British taxpayer through our TV licence fees. I’m effectively paying for them to make this crap. That’s what pisses me off more than anything.

Yes we mercifully come to the end of this... this. Episode 1 was a slow, plodding and utterly tedious affair that was about as exciting as an Amish bachelor party. Episode 2 was even worse thanks to its poor narrative structure, terrible characterisation and less than subtle allegories. Now Harness has come to hammer the final nail in the coffin with Episode 3. Is it bad?

...

You’re right, that’s a stupid question. A more apt question would be how bad is it. Very, very bad is the answer. Very, very bad indeed.

Lets start with the obvious problem. The non-linear narrative introduced in the previous episode. The stupid early reveal that the Martians ultimately lose and that Amy survives completely destroyed any and all tension and suspense thanks to Peter Harness desperately trying to outwit the audience instead of just telling a story. Now, bizarrely, he tries to reintroduce tension by having the characters umming and arghing about what killed the Martians off and whether this could help stop the Earth from terraforming. One teeny, tiny problem with this though. The audience already know! Even those that never read the original book know how it ended! And even if you didn’t, the episode drops enough hints like great fucking boulders. The prevalence of typhoid throughout the episode and its correlation with the Martians stumbling around like a drunken prom date isn’t exactly hard to miss. Harness’ writing is still as unsubtle as ever. But worse still, he completely undermines and misses the point of the ending to War Of The Worlds.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people (mostly Americans) criticise the end of the original book for being a deus ex machina. I mean the Martians get killed off by the common cold. How stupid, right? Except it’s not because those people (mostly Americans) are looking at it the wrong way. Your main takeaway shouldn’t be that the Martians were easily killed off by bacteria. Rather that we failed to stop them. The reason humanity prevails in the end is more down to luck than anything else. The narrator even attributes this to being an act of God. But here’s the thing. We didn’t stand a chance against the Martians. We didn’t beat them. They lost because they just happened to catch a cold. Now it’s not hard to imagine a society as scientifically advanced as their’s to be able to find some kind of cure or vaccine for it. And if and when they do, what then? We’d be fucked, wouldn’t we? Should the Martians ever return to finish what they started, the human race would be well and truly doomed. It’s not a deus ex machina. It’s a dire warning of what’s to come. A brief respite before the inevitable. That’s what makes the ending so effective.

The BBC series however completely misunderstands this, changing the story so that Ogilvy (an astronomer, don’t forget) somehow manages to weaponize typhoid in order to kill the red weed, which is presented as some kind of victory, when in reality it’s quite an insulting deviation from the source material. If only the Commonwealth could shake off the remnants of British colonialism as easily as these guys dealt with the red weed. Not to mention it just makes the Martians look really stupid. So they come to Earth, drink our blood, keel over and then... what, they just give up? Are they just waiting for humanity to die by itself? What happens when Mars HQ realises the red weed hasn’t worked? What then? Are they just going to shrug it off? It doesn’t make any sense.

Which brings us to the Martians themselves. The picture above comes from the Jeff Wayne musical version and is without a doubt the most accurate depiction of the Martians from the book. Most of the other adaptations have wildly different interpretations, which isn’t a problem in and of itself provided it works within the context of that particular narrative. However the reason I bring up the original design is so I can talk about what H.G. Wells intended when he came up with them. See, while the Martians are highly intelligent, they’re also presented as being quite vestigial. They’re sluggish thanks to Earth’s heavier gravity, rendered practically deaf thanks to Earth’s dense atmosphere and apparently have no organs with which to digest their food, hence their need to inject human blood directly into themselves for sustenance. The Martians represent what humanity could become as we become more and more reliant on technology. The Industrial Revolution brought about a lot of societal fears and concerns at the time, and the Martians are those fears manifested. Heartless creatures reduced to being simple brains, unable to properly interact with the world around them.

The BBC series goes a very different route. Instead of the giant brains, we instead get giant brown crabs, which, again, isn’t necessarily a problem provided it works in context. And that’s the problem. It doesn’t. The original Wells design told us what we needed to know about their biology, their motivations and their society. What do we learn about the BBC Martians? They’re big, generic monsters that look like rejects from Stranger Things. They don’t even inject blood into themselves. They feed off of us directly, leechlike. They’re more like animals. Not the vast, cold, unsympathetic intellects they were described to be. At no point do you buy that these creatures would be capable of building the Tripods or colonising the Earth. They just exist for some cheap jump scares and horror movie cliches.

What’s worse is that by changing the Martians’ design so drastically, any subtextual allegory gets chucked in the bin. The Martians from the book are meant to represent the British Empire at the height of its power. Merciless tyrants stomping all over the lives and cultures of the so called ‘lesser races,’ changing the environment to suit them rather than adapting to the existing environment. It’s Darwinism crossed with arrogance. And yet, ironically, the oppressors (the Martians) are technically inferior to the natives (the humans) as they are incapable of surviving without the aid of technology. The BBC series is unable to make this allegory, so Harness has to resort to straight up telling the audience the allegory. In by far the clunkiest scene in the entire series, we see George argue with his brother about how the Martians are no different from the Brits in their colonial ways. Not only does this break the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule and stands as a perfect example of bad storytelling, Harness doesn’t even bother to do anything with this other than just making the comparison. It’s been previously established that Amy was born and raised in India. You’d think she’d have something to say about all this, but nope. At the end, she wistfully describes India to her son in the most patronising and insulting way possible. It’s really quite disgusting. I mean H.G. Wells was quite patronising towards the Tasmanians in the book, but in his defence, he was a privileged white man from the 1800s. What’s Peter Harness’ excuse?! Ostensibly he pays lip service to the idea that the Martians are no different from the Brits, but he doesn’t want to really explore it or get us to actually think about it. Probably because it’s all a bit too complicated to get into, but if he’s not confident about exploring such topics, why the fuck is he adapting War Of The Worlds in the first bloody place?! Write something else!

In fact I think this is the root of all the problems with this adaptation. Harness clearly isn’t capable of exploring the complex themes of the source material, so instead he either introduces irrelevant social issues that aren’t nearly as complicated (women’s rights, empires are bad and so on) as a token show of progressiveness, or he goes as far as to uncomplicate themes and ideas to an almost offensive degree. In the book, the narrator is trapped in a church with a priest who is going through a major existential crisis and risks giving away their hiding spot to the Martians, who are busy terraforming the planet. So he resorts to knocking the priest unconscious and watching as the Martians drag his body away. In the BBC series, we see the old woman and the kid get killed off for no reason other than shock value and the characters have nothing to do with their demise, so they’re morally in the clear. The priest meanwhile doesn’t even appear in the scene, instead being relegated to the shitty flash forwards where his faith remains very much intact and even protests against the idea that it’s humanity’s illness that stopped the Martians rather than an act of God (brief side note, would Ogilvy really be this open about not believing in God? At the time of the book’s publication, the scene with the priest losing faith was considered extremely controversial, so this just seems utterly wrong). Plus there’s no tension in wondering what the Martians are doing and whether they’re going to find the characters. In fact there’s no tension whatsoever because we know the Martians have fallen ill and the characters are just hanging around, waiting for the fuckers to die. I cannot stress enough how atrociously awful the writing is in this show. We know the Martians are dying and the episode is about the characters waiting for them to die.

Jesus fucking Christ!

The Artilleryman from the previous episode was the same. In the book he was a deluded crackpot who willingly bought into imperialist dogma, believing that humanity could rebuild underground and eventually rise up and defeat the Martians. In the BBC series, he was a scared, innocent little waif being forced to fight in a war he wants no part of. It’s an incredibly shallow and uninteresting reinterpretation of the source material.

But the worst, the absolute worst, is what Harness does with George.

To be clear, no I’m not upset he gets killed off. I’ve made my views on him quite clear. He cheated on his wife because she was infertile and ran off to make whoopie with some redhead. The bastard deserves everything he gets, frankly. Plus I’ve had enough of Rafe Spall’s gormless acting to last a lifetime, thank you. What I am upset by is the way he gets killed off.

One of the most interesting parts of the original book is the fact that there are no heroes in War Of The Worlds. The Artilleryman is a young, impressionable, nationalist fool, the Priest descends into a pit of nihilistic despair, and the narrator survives only by his cowardice. He even goes as far as to attempt suicide, throwing himself in front of the unbeknownst to him dead Tripod because he cannot bear the idea of living in a world like this. It’s extremely dark and very cynical. The BBC series goes a very different route. We see George slowly become delirious as a result of the typhoid infection he got by drinking the poisoned cup of water in the previous episode (so all that stuff about the Martian terraforming was a load of bollocks) before, realising that he is becoming a burden to Amy, deciding to make the supreme sacrifice and facing the lone Martian alone while she makes a run for it. Not only does this open up a major plot hole - who the fuck was Amy expecting to arrive from the North if George is dead? They try to dismiss this as memory suppression, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply to losing a loved one to a fucking alien - it also completely stands at odds with the themes of the book. When facing annihilation at the hands of a higher power, the arrogant Brits, who previously lived a life of privilege on the backs of millions of subjugated, reveal themselves for who they truly are at their core. The BBC series says yeah, we were a bunch of racist tosspots with delusions of grandeur, but we weren’t all bad. The main takeaway I got from this despicable, badly written series was a three hour pity party about how all those selfish POCs don’t consider the feelings of white people and asking why can’t we all just get along.

Peter Harness’ bastardisation of War Of The Worlds is without a doubt one of the worst adaptations I’ve ever seen. In fact it’s quite possibly one of the worst TV shows I’ve ever seen, period. It’s not just the sheer disregard for the source material that upsets me. It’s also the absolute amateurish nature of the whole fucking thing. This series fails in some of the most basic ways. His writing is truly terrible, somehow getting steadily worse and worse with each episode. It’s not just upsetting to see someone get the fundamental elements of storytelling so spectacularly wrong, it honestly makes me sick to my fucking stomach. Peter Harness, please, for your own sake and my sanity, stop fucking writing. You’re clearly not good at it and I don’t want to see my money go to someone who obviously hasn’t the faintest fucking idea what they’re doing. Enough is enough.

So it would seem that Jeff Wayne’s musical version remains the best adaptation of War Of The Worlds. In fact can we just have a movie adaptation of that please?

[chiclet-go-boom]

AND ANOTHER THING

Okay, back to insomnia for another night since this stupid fucking movie is keeping me awake with emotional trauma. So here are my highlights of pain because I have nothing else to do at 4am but try and get them out of me and into the void where hopefully they’ll rot quietly.

Long rant about The Rise of Skywalker with even more swear words.

------------------

PLOT HOLES SO DEEP THEY HAVE THEIR OWN EVENT HORIZON

Pretty much this entire movie, but these are the highlights that stick out: 

How the fuck did Palpatine survive his on-camera death? It’s not only never explained, it’s never even touched on. Nobody asks any questions, ever. Complete retcon for the Original Trilogy. 

How the fuck was Palpatine somehow Snoke as well? We get a brief shot of Snoke clones in a vat, and that’s it for what we know. His old ass raisin body is still around looking creepier than ever, so he’s not transferring his consciousness around into new vessels apparently. 

If he was Snoke, why the hell did he command Kylo to kill Rey in the throne room of the Supremacy “to complete his training”, when his motivation for this movie was to get Rey alive to Exogol to kill him so he could… transfer his consciousness? See previous point.

Palpatine tells Rey she has to kill him so they can “be one” in order to save her friends… only if she does that and he takes her over, he’s not likely going to save her friends. Yet Rey treats it as a serious choice. 

If Palpatine wants Rey to kill him so he can merge with her or take her over or whatever the hell transfer of sith power is suppose happen and then she turns around AND DOES IT, why is Palpatine actually really dead now? He wanted to be dead. That was the whole point. Do I trust in this? Or is the guy just mostly-dead again. This plotline whistles, it has so many holes.

Rey and Kylo Ren are equals in the Force. Rey is shown at the very beginning of the movie happily drifting twenty feet in the air while doing her best impression of an atom illustration at the same time. If you read the comics, Snoke is also shown tossing a younger Kylo over a cliff and Kylo catches himself with the Force above the rocks. Now, Kylo gets tossed into a pit at the end and just… falls to his near death? And has to climb up using his hands? Why show Rey floating if you’re not going to use it later for Kylo? Does JJ just not get the concept behind Chekhov’s Gun? 

Lightspeed skipping. Very cool. I’ll allow it in space, particularly if you have a Force sensitive pilot who might be able to sense where they’re going and not rip themselves apart by impacting something solid (hello, Holdo Sacrifice Maneuver) but you can’t jump to lightspeed in gravity wells. You’ll tear your ship apart. The fact that Han did once is an outlier and should not be counted because that asshole has the galaxy’s own luck when it comes to bending fate and consequence. Did absolutely nobody read Wookiepedia?

And now TIE fighters can do it too and have both hyperspeed and hyperspace tracking technology installed? Kylo’s Whisper is unique with its lightspeed capabilities, a cutting edge piece of technology, but the ships chasing Poe in the opening Resistance sequence are just run of the mill fighter ships. They should have been left in the proverbial dirt.

JUST GENERAL CRATER SIZES PLOTHOLES

Why did Kylo try to mow Rey down with his actual ship, when it had perfectly serviceable and oh, deadly guns? 

If C3PO wasn’t permitted by his programming to translate the dagger (because otherwise this movie would be over a lot faster), why didn’t they just go to a library on Coruscant? 

Luke and Leia knew Rey was of Palpatine blood all along? Then why did neither of them know who the hell she was when they met in the previous movies? Luke even said “Who are you?” right to her face. 

Why the hell did Rey die? She had all the power of a thousand generations at her fingertips and they’ve already shown she can heal mortal wounds. Instead she just… keels over because the script told her to.  So Ben can turn up and heal her back, because they share the same soul and he has the same power. You know, the ability to heal mortal wounds? Only now it’s his turn to keel over for no reason. And if he has to fade into the Force, why the fuck didn’t Rey do it first, leaving him no body to save? 

How the hell does a dagger that can point to an ancient Sith wayfinder artefact have an exact match to the outline of a piece of wreckage. It would only be useable from a precise angle and distance to the silhouette - the angle and distance that nobody had any way of knowing. 

Since when can Force ghosts catch material objects out of the air and lift physical machinery? 

Speaking of, how the hell does a rusted, damaged X-Wing deliberately sunk for a decade in order to strand its owner on-planet with no way off even if he changes his mind have no problems drying out and working perfectly for a hyperspace jump? 

Kylo’s Whisper had the wayfinder plugged into it when he went to Exogol. He then used his ship to try and run Rey down on Pasaana, only she damaged it and the central cockpit went up in a ball of flame, sans wings. The wayfinder should have been toast, yet it somehow turns up on a different ship, the one that Rey steals from Kylo on the Death Star. Is the wayfinder now on all Kylo’s ships? The magic multiplying wayfinder? And completely immune to blistering fire temperatures that melted a space-capable ship? 

Why is an entire fleet of destroyers, so many they dwarf the skies, just sitting idly on a planet and needing navigational guidance in order to get above atmosphere? Who grounds a star destroyer at all, let alone a murderous amount of them?

How did they get planet killing weapons on those destroyers without massive amounts of kyber? Kyber is scarce, Starkiller Base would have likely wiped out any known remaining stocks of the precious mineral. And the stuff is unstable as fuck, which is why its limited to lightsabers (tiny amounts of crystal) or huge moon-sized bases to contain it. Sticking it on a ship should be impossible. It’s never questioned or explained. 

Why was Palpatine surprised by the Force Bond? Surprised enough to completely abandon his plan to take over Rey and instead decided he’d just suck the bond dry of power to regenerate his body (well, it fixed his fingers at least). If he was Snoke or controlling Snoke as he claimed, he should have not only known all about it, he should have known how strong it was. 

Rey won by deflecting Palpatine’s Force lightning back at him and melting his body like shades of The Lost Ark. All he needed to do was… stop using lightning and I don’t know, Force push her into the pit with Kylo. Rey problem solved. If Kylo couldn’t levitate anymore, Rey sure couldn’t. 

IT TRIVIALIZES CONSEQUENCES. IT TRIVIALIZES SACRIFICE.

In one of the few cool and unexpected things, Rey destroys a transport with Force lightning. She kills her friend Chewbacca (and a bunch of redshirt stormtroopers). She screams in horror but finally runs away from the crime. We’re all devastated, poor Chewie 

But wait, no! There were two transports out of fucking nowhere apparently and Chewie is just captured. So it’s a mulligan, people. His death is erased, it didn’t happen. This also counts as a plot hole since Rey senses Chewbacca nearby on the destroyer later just fine, but couldn’t tell he was just on the other side of the rock while they were on the ground.

In order to be permitted to translate the Sith markings on the dagger, C3PO has to undergo a factory reset. He has a poignant moment saying goodbye to everyone and then metaphorically lays down and dies for the cause. But wait! No, actually he’s fine. R2D2 restores nearly his entire memory later on, we can all calm down now.

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo sacrifices himself for the love of his life and nobody takes even a second to mourn him. Even Rey just moves on with no trouble - she doesn’t even cry. If it happens, it happens off camera and therefore doesn’t happen at all. His sacrifice meant nothing because nobody but nobody will ever know about it. 

SO MUCH PANDERING IT SHOULD LOUNGE AGAINST A STREETLIGHT

C3PO, a minor character in all the movies, suddenly has a major speaking part and actual plot relevance.

Rey training with the blind helmet and the hunter drone like Luke did. 

Rey wearing a Rebel helmet as she escapes from Ahch-To. 

Lando. Again. Used as a signpost (go that way, kids!) and appears again with the cavalry later, just like he did in previous movies. 

Rey sliding down yet another dune

Ewoks cheering as something blows up in the sky

A star destroyer going down over the Jakku ship graveyard.

Double sunrise/sunset on a sand planet. (fine, I can live with this one)

Chewbacca finally get a medal

Tatooine itself and the Lars homestead. 

THE COMPLETE LOSS OF CHARACTERISATION

Rose Tico who? She has a couple of throwaway lines and a walk on appearance. What a jerk move for a great character.

Hux gets barely more significance and completely throws away his entire motivation from the first two movies (a calculated rise to power to command a galaxy wide army because he wants control of everything) in exchange for utterly petty harrassment. It’s not even revenge, he can’t affect much. He doesn’t even plot against Kylo, he just kicks the metaphorical equivalent of sand onto Kylo’s robes and mutters something about rubber and glue. Then gets himself killed because he’s stupid. This is the man who masterminded a superweapon and used it, only to get taken out with a bulky bandage wrapped around the outside of his uniform.

Finn’s decision to leave the First Order in an act of real bravery is reduced to because a “feeling” told him too. Because he has the Force. But doesn’t tell anyone all year. For reasons. He had two character arcs in the other movies, moving him away from a drone in a faceless army into a person with agency and something to offer, and he spends three quarters of this movie running after Rey and yelling her name.

Poe. Oh god, they murdered Poe. He’s the fucking son of real heroes of the Resistance, a golden child with his own legacy burdens and they instead they give him (and his Hispanic actor) a drug dealer background. Crass at best, utterly contemptible at worst. The movies are the most canon canon that it can be. Did nobody check Poe’s Wookiepedia page before putting this into the script?

Kylo Ren kills both his masters in the previous movie, only to bow to a third within the first five minutes in this one. Kylo says “I’ll kill you too” but the next thing we know, he’s got red decals on his helmet proclaiming his new allegiance. What the fuck? Then spends most of the movie contradicting everything he said in TLJ proving that yes, Kylo Ren was lying to Rey all along and it all was a manipulative dick move to consolidate personal power at the expense of everything else. Spends his time gaslighting her and telling her she has no choice but to be his queen. 

(side note on this: he TELLS her she WILL take his hand the next time he offers it… aaaaand she doesn’t. Again. Why the fuck did they put that in the script at all? So Kylo can look stupid by being so confident and forceful with his prediction only to get blown off when the moment comes around again? pfft.)

Even Palpatine isn’t consistent. He wanted to live forever, tricking Death and reigning as the supreme Sith Lord for all time. Instead in this movie he apparently just wants to be Rey. He spends 30 years grooming the scion of Skywalker and does absolutely nothing with him in the end. 

TOLD THE WRONG FUCKING STORY

This story should have pulled threads from Anakin’s fall and Luke’s failure and used them to tell a story about how its always possible to come back from the worst of your choices and that love for family, love for friends and love for each other is the one real power in the world. 

Instead all the Skywalkers died because Palpatine worked through three generations to subvert the will of the very Force so that his bloodline is the only one that remains ascendant. Rey turns out only to be powerful because her grandfather was powerful, completely negating the idea that the Force plays no favorites and anybody can be the one to turn the tide of evil. Anakin’s children are painted in the worst possible light and the entire saga ends on a horrible, desolate note because all of them died and the one who deserved it the least had to give the utmost, and will still always be painted as the villain. 

We had bad guys already. The First Order. Hux. Fuck, they could have elevated Mitaka and given the poor baby some meatier lines. We could have had a stormtrooper uprising, which would have tied beautifully to Finn and given him an arc. We had a power dynamic we cared about - Hux versus Kylo which could have gone in very interesting directions with Snoke no longer holding either of their leashes. We did not need a completely new army full of ships to fight and the complete erasure and irrelevance of the First Order. 

The decision to include Palpatine could have been a specific plot tied to Kylo-as-Skywalker-bloodline, exploring and driving his redemption as the extent of his lifelong manipulation becomes apparent. Instead, he’s got nothing to do with Kylo other than spouting a few lines at the Supreme Leader at the beginning and then tossing him into the pit at the end. What a waste of an intriguing idea.

Going by dialogue count and the amount of scenes he’s in, Poe is the protagonist in this story, except nothing changes for him. Rey wanders around angry for most of the movie for reasons that are unclear and nothing changes for her either except the revelation that her grandpa is still around which she tells nobody about so it’s never a thing that needs to be dealt with. Kylo is an unyielding, uncompromising murder bot again and is the only one where something about him materially changes, even if its kinda hamfisted. We ran around for the entire movie and nobody even SAID anything to each other for the most part, honestly. 

Han Solo’s memory was poignant, if you’re okay with rehashes of conversations we’ve already had in other movies. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo has no lines of dialogue for nearly the last hour of the movie beyond ‘ow’. How his actor managed to carry his character through that anyways is a fucking tribute to Adam Driver’s skill with his facial expressions. 

Leia crawled off into a hole to die with nobody noticing and managed to distract her son long enough to get him likely mortally stabbed by the person who was supposed to love him most. Rey did what Luke failed to do. She even regretted it right afterwards just like Luke did. (For the record, this is the point in the movie where I gave up all hope. If Rey could actually bring herself to hurt Kylo, let alone stick his own saber in his chest, I didn’t recognize her character anymore.)

Luke promised Kylo he’d see him again, but then spent all his Force energy motivating Rey, so Kylo died still hating his uncle and never forgiving his mom. 

Kylo Ren never reconciled himself with Ben Solo. The movie just treated him like he had a Jekyll/Hyde thing going on so they could throw Kylo into the sea, leaving only Ben behind. That is so fucking simplistic I could have howled. 

JUST STRAIGHT UP ‘WUT’ MOMENTS

They literally dropped on top of the dagger mcguffin that had been buried for twenty years. Just. Fell on it. 

Rey’s parents sold her into slavery to keep her safe? Say wut? 

How the fuck did Palpatine lose track of his kid and his grandkid in the first place? Palpatine doesn’t have kids in canon, he’s SITH. He doesn’t share. If he had relatives, they’d’ve been sacrificed on a Dark Altar loooong before now.

Why is Rey on Tatooine with BB8? Isn’t that Poe’s droid? Did Poe and his droid get a divorce?

Why the hell does Rey have a new lightsaber out of literally nowhere. Ben just died three minutes ago onscreen. Why are we suddenly looking at new glowing stick. Did weeks pass? Months? 

How did Leia become a Jedi and we’re only just finding out about it now? And if Leia was a Jedi, why the fuck did she send her ten year old special needs son to his uncle? Are they actually trying to paint Leia as a bad mother who dumped a problem child on her family to take care of while she carried on with her life?

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

The Knights of Ren. They just turned out to be four seconds of eye candy and completely unnecessary. They wandered around looking vaguely menacing and that was their entire function. They didn’t even actually menace anything until fighting their supposed Master for a half minute for completely ambiguous reasons. Why were they even in the film in the first place? 

Jannah could very well be Lando’s daughter per the supplementary materials, but it’s not even mentioned when Lando first pops up - that he’s living on this planet now and his young daughter was harvested by the First Order. It would have been a great “heyyyy” moment at the end when he offers to help her find her family. 

Anakin. Oh sweet biscuits and gravy, why didn’t Hayden Christensen make a cameo in this as Anakin and give Kylo hope at the end? We could have tied the prequels to the sequels so effortlessly and given our favorite character something he’s wanted for most of his life, the approval and love of his grandfather. Hell, I personally would trade Han Solo’s moment (as sweet as it was) for a moment with Vader. 

Kylo (or Rey by proxy) never got a chance to heal his kyber crystal. That should have happened, it would have been fucking poignant to mend something fractured that badly and been a much better symbol than Kylo simply throwing his saber away. It’s supposed to represent his life, his soul. Again, see previous comment about dumb Jekyll/Hyde parallel.

IN CONCLUSION

If you could care less about these characters and Star Wars and you are indeed a casual fan, this movie is pretty to look at. That’s its one redeeming feature. Finn and Poe have great banter, they should have been boyfriends. D-O was cute. Poor Snap, I guess.

Yes, I care that Rey and Kylo/Ben got their kiss, but it was robbed of nearly every iota of emotional weight by the previous two hours of near useless plot and exposition. It could have made me happy cry. Instead I was all but numb with the whiplash, and when I heard “Rey Skywalker” I couldn’t get out of the theatre fast enough.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk on how emotional trauma over fictional characters has all but derailed my Christmas. 

[land-of-brains-and-chocolate]

god it WILL NOT stop bothering me until i talk about it. the way we got here. it’s not just about the book anymore, not at all, and it’s certainly never been about “shipping”, at this point it’s how helpless the tactics of the guy make me feel.

step one: refer to people who have read previous venom books and noticed the trend throughout the nineties to portray eddie and the symbiote as a man and an agender alien in an ambiguously or not-so-ambiguously romantic relationship, which was picked up on and completely unambiguously canonised in the very last run, consistently refer to these people as “shippers”, lovingly condescend to them, do not ever treat “the ship” as existing beyond their imagination

[I LOVE THAT YOU GUYS EXIST]

result: make people forget that this is a complete misrepresentation and he has received no criticism whatsoever for “not making a ship canon” because that is not what he did, he decanonised it and then denied doing so and painted everyone it ever meant something to as essentially deluded - and, considering that that’s all they are, he’s being awfully kind and accommodating, isn’t he?

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step two: actively seek out these no-good shippers on tumblr! tell them that you’re watching them! read their detailed posts in which they express their grievances about your comic book to their friends and misrepresent their points on your twitter so your bajillion followers can affirm that Those People are categorically wrong about everything!

[EDDIE IS CODEPENDENT]

people are mad at him because he said eddie was codependent! not because he’s reframing the extremely rare story of a troubled queer relationship that was ultimately still a redemptive force in these characters’ lives as an unhealthy compulsion that corrupts, hm, what a fresh and unfamiliar take, no reason why this would strike a nerve - and, recently, of course, as something inherently abusive, every bit of hope and change for the better vile and fake.

literally just start vaguing about people’s personal tumblr blogs on your professional twitter account with the little, little blue checkmark and everything, use that to make passive-aggressive references to people’s posts! why not!

[LOVE EACH OTHER]

people talk about how they like a symbiote and its host getting along (and they did, that very night, talk quite a lot about ngozi)? that is so dumb and lame.

[EVERYTHING IS AWESOME]

people get sick of edgy shock factor writing that throws one dark theme after another at them without treating any of them with the consideration they deserve? people expect some moments of levity in a venom book?

they’re asking for stories with no conflict where nothing bad ever happens! but it’s okay, he knows better, he knows you just don’t know what you want! it’s not like endless sadness is just as likely to be dreadfully boring or unintentionally hilarious as endless happiness!

result: o w n e d god he sure is shutting down every point no one has ever made

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step three: literally get so mad at people on tumblr talking about your comic that you not only boil their opinions down to THE SHIIIIP but literally say that their opinions don’t matter because they literally would never say it “to your face” literally because it’s “easy to be brave on tumblr”

literally

say these words

[IT’S EASY TO BE BRAVE ON TUMBLR]

call people chicken shits for NOT talking to you directly! and then! BLOCK everybody who talks to you directly! or quote retweet them so your followers can descend like vultures! actually acknowledge that it takes bravery to interact with you if you’re in the Tumblr Demographic, you know, one of Those People, and frame yourself as in the right for it???

am i losing my mind???

[SIX PEOPLE ON TUMBLR]

get so mad at people on tumblr talking about your comic that you not only claim they’re the only people ever to talk badly of it but imply that you’re one step away from namedropping the specific perpetrators. that’s not ominous at all!

it’s an age-old question: how many times does one of marvel’s top writers with legions of fans have to imply his antagonistic awareness of your specific existence before you’re on a first name basis? and also paranoid?

result: stir shit. be a shit stirrer. faint when your shit stirring does in fact stir shit. you can’t go “you would never” and be surprised when people do, you... can’t...

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step four: whip out your ally card... to whip the people you’re supposed to be allied to with it. try to use your knowledge of queer issues to shut down actual queer people.

[I DON’T THINK IT’S APPROPRIATE TO ASSUME GENDER]

either that, or straight-up make a “did you just assume my gender” joke. i can’t find the original tweet anymore, so it’s possible it was that and he deleted it because it was too blatant, lol.

result: MAYBE YOU GUYS WERE THE PROBLEMATIC ONES ALL ALONG

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes!

step five: remember that interview where he outright stated that he just wants to, just to be the definite venom run? just to put the biggest dent in canon he can? just to break everybody’s toys and emerge victorious as the one person with the valid take on venom?

yeah, those things become more noticeable in the actual book, over time, and acceptance of that is, uh, not universal? not everybody’s up for him spending several issues in a row on e s t a b l i s h i n g  d o m i n a n c e by having eddie sit around as other characters tell him that a ton of stuff other writers from michelinie to thompson to costa to kaminski to slott to jenkins have done actually sucked and was wrong and fake and never happened? through retcons that make no sense, like, factually don’t fit?

people don’t like you walking back character and relationship development to further your end goal of recasting the symbiote as the personification of addiction and abuse instead of itself a survivor of extreme abuse who has been constantly denied personhood in a way that is frighteningly resonant and who has been going through a genuine redemption arc for years now?

people don’t like you acting like eddie never had a reason for being who he is before and you had to make one up? one that doesn’t fit the character at all, which you didn’t realise because you apparently thought the character had no characterisation before you came along?

you can imagine how these things might spark nerd rage?

and you can probably imagine who this nerd rage was blamed on, yeah?

these criticisms inherently require knowledge of venom canon, because they’re largely about disrespect for it, these criticisms are not related to shipping of any kind - but of course the only thing people could possibly be mad about is the "ship", the only ones making a fuss are those “shippers”, those casuals, Those People who only care about One Thing and don’t understand the real gritty reality of the, god you get it i’m making fun

[I KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT]

you’re the only one, don. it’s true.

and i know, i know for a fact, that he’s been aware of criticism from other groups all along, that he was, for example, witness to this livestream that spends like a solid hour a month mercilessly dragging him through the dirt, and you know what the extent of his response was?

thanks for checking the book out.

that’s it. that’s all. this guy hasn’t gotten any less loud about criticising him, either. wishing for his book’s cancellation and retconning. but nothing more. he gets to keep to himself. he is #valid.

people have been taking the piss out of him on youtube, on reddit. only tumblr ever earned his ire. only tumblr gets namedropped at convention panels.

and now, now more than ever? you better believe your regular run-of-the-mill nerds, straight, male, utterly uninterested in the icky stuff, everything, are mad. almost everyone who’s truly tits deep in venom lore is mad.

and so he’s said he’s received threats. and i’m sure he has. i’ve received threats. you’ve received threats. it’s never okay. it sure as shit never helps to send them.

he’s gotten a lot of fucking inappropriate personal vitriol! lots of it actually “ship”-related! i’m categorically against contacting the guy for any reason!

but who is to blame? who do people accept as being to blame? who do news outlets report on as being to blame? when, i presume, not every single one of them actually went “i’m doing this specifically because i’m a (thunder clap) shipper”? when large-scale retcons are literally always met with nerd rage? when a shipper-less fandom probably still would’ve had threats?

[THIS IS INSANE]

[IT’S THE SHIPPERS]

result: if all criticism = “shippers”, and “shippers” = harassment, then everyone who has no actual idea of what’s going on but who doesn’t like “shippers” is automatically on his side and nobody who isn’t a “shipper” wants to risk the association by criticising him.

get this stuff out to his followers, to news outlets, to people completely uninvolved and contextless, and watch the bile run over everywhere because lots of people are ready to accept this narrative in comic book spaces.

have people in the replies and comments eagerly discussing how this is more proof that c+o+m+i+c+s+gate was right and they’re the only reasonable ones. how disgusting and crazy "shippers” are. how donny should keep doing his best to trigger the gays. there’s no pushback against these ideas.

and i’m so fucking stuck between wanting to defend the man, wring my hands and apologise on behalf of the other These People, because i don’t see anything justifiable in their actions, and in being... just... just so frustrated... with everything... with throwing everyone out to the dogs... and claiming that he doesn’t mean to... when he has this whole history of belittling "shippers” specifically... of making sure their public image is that of people who just don’t know what they’re talking about and are in no way worth empathising with... of only drawing attention to the aggressive ones and blocking the reasonable ones

when he literally only stands to benefit from doing all this. 

this is massive amounts of free positive pr.

this makes him essentially immune to criticism of any kind.

evaluation: a reason to harass him? no! really kind of manipulative? yes! 

i forgot! somewhere along the line, he did do something very good and disavowed association with co/mics/ga/te!

[C0M1C5G8]

why the fuck am i censoring? tumblr search stopped working decades ago.

anyway, it should come as no particular surprise why these people assumed he would side with them. not that any high profile writer who values his standing would, really. are there any? maybe there are, i’m not up to date on this drama.

i just think it’s funny - genuinely not his fault, but hilarious - that this was apparently enough to inspire a “boycott”? and it was a fart in the wind?

which is the least surprising thing ever because there is actually nothing whatsoever to hold these people’s ire to be found in venom? excluding aliens, there has been one real and present character who isn’t a white guy in 11 issues? it is actively less queer than it was before? donny has never caved to the essjaywoo pressure in any way, shape or form? what were they... thinking? it’s almost like these people are dumb?

all they've done is ensure that, without it actually doing anything, venom gets the commendation for being A Comic The Gators Don't Like?

anyway.

what do we do moving forward? i don’t know. nothing. not harassing anyone. keep being salty on tumblr. do not engage him. i think i’m more about stalling the chain reaction he’s caused than the man himself. if you’re not a “shipper”, of course, keep posting your criticism, maybe stand up for “shippers” who are being dogpiled over genuine criticism, don’t let people say This Is All Proof Of How You Can’t Have Queer Content Because Queers Are Crazy.

and be nice to mike costa.

[animexalchemist]

Keyblade Theorising II

So after posting about the Kingdom Key and Riku’s role in giving it to Sora, someone asked me what I made of Kairi’s keyblade. The result? A bloody essay. Read on for more mad theorising!

Note: contains spoilers for KHIII!

So Kairi gets her keyblade in KHII and it happens thusly: she jumps down to save Sora, gets surrounded by heartless, and they immediately bury her. She calls out for Sora to help her as the heartless’ darkness begin to consume her and then there is a bright flash of light. This bright flash of light immediately kills all of the heartless and then Riku is holding out a keyblade for her (and really, this whole thing can be paralleled with how Sora got his keyblade in KHI). Clearly the light that vanquished the darkness is Riku’s. Think about that: Riku’s light despite him taking the form of Ansem, where darkness is currently winning in Riku’s internal dark/light battle.

Riku’s light, eh? Pretty damn strong.

So I have two theories about where her keyblade came from, and I’m not saying one is better than the other. I’m just kinda laying down my thoughts.

1.) This is Aqua’s keyblade

We know in BBS that Kairi accidentally touching Aqua’s keyblade meant that she inherited it. Which… I always thought was complete bullshit and ran counter to everything that had been established about how bequeathing ceremonies worked (Terra actually performed it for Riku, where Kairi just touched Aqua’s blade and that counts??), but supposedly Kairi’s heart was worthy of the blade which is why it’s legit. I don’t think that this keyblade was forged of Kairi’s personal light because none of the other princesses of heart were able to call forth a keyblade, and the manner in which she gained her keyblade suggests that it didn’t come directly from her, but from an external source.

So let’s assume this is Aqua’s keyblade. We know thanks to KHIII that at some point while Aqua was trapped in the RoD, she lost her keyblade. She had it in II.5, which covers the events of KHI, but lost it at some point during KHII. So it could be that Kairi being in danger called forth the keyblade that was ‘bequeathed’ to her by Aqua, and that’s where it came from, thus in effect leaving Aqua keyblade-less. Aqua ‘losing’ her keyblade shouldn’t be a thing, given that keyblades are connected to the wielder, but if Luxu literally lost his ability to keyblade once he passed it on then this would explain why Aqua suddenly lost her ability to keyblade: it passed on to Kairi, leaving Aqua behind.

This once more shows how powerful Riku really is. Aqua is a full on Keyblade Master but once she has lost her keyblade, that’s it. She’s defenceless. She cannot make another. And yet Riku, if my earlier observations hold any weight, has at least two keyblades in the Kingdom Key and Way To Dawn (later Braveheart).

How did Aqua’s keyblade seek Kairi out? Aqua put her own magic in Kairi’s necklace and given the things we have seen in this series so far, it isn’t too much of a stretch to believe the keyblade zoned in on this magic and ended up with Kairi.

But then why was Riku the one holding it? The fact he could hold it at all, when keyblades typically reject anyone but their true wielder, leads to my other idea.

2.) This is yet another keyblade forged from Riku’s light

So, in effect, this is the THIRD keyblade that Riku is sustaining. The bright light happens, Riku’s light, and suddenly he’s holding yet another keyblade that he quite literally hands over to Kairi. When he gave the Kingdom Key to Sora, it was more of his heart choosing to do so. But he just up and hands her this one. And I think it’s likely due to similar reasons as to why he gave one to Sora: Riku wants to keep Kairi safe.

Despite KHIII utterly ruining any relationship these two had, KHI and KHII actually did a decent job of making it seem that Kairi and Riku are friends. Riku in KHI is literally doing everything in his power to get Kairi’s heart back. He even says that he’ll work with Maleficent and embrace the the darkness more if that is what it takes to save Kairi (whether this is truly genuine or only part of the truth, in that he says this as an excuse to get closer to darkness, is up for debate). The last thing he says in KHI? “Take care of her [Kairi]”. And in KHII, when Kairi and Naminé are surrounded by Nobodies and shit looks dire? Riku swoops in to save the day, and subsequently spends a lot of his time protecting Kairi (he literally wraps his arms around her to protect her from Saïax’s berserker mode). So it isn’t wildly out of character for him to try and give her a means to protect herself, as he did for Sora, by giving her a keyblade. The only difference being that, while the Kingdom Key was actually Riku’s keyblade that he’s passed on, this seems to be a keyblade he forged specifically for Kairi.

Extra: I didn’t know this as I initially typed these musings as I haven’t read the manga, but a friend pointed out that in the manga Luxu seems shocked that Kairi had a keyblade and (with a sort of begrudging respect) asks Riku how the hell he managed to make one for her.

Kairi’s Keyblade: What’s In A Name?

So Kairi’s keyblade is called Destiny’s Embrace (in English) or Destiny’s Place (in Japanese). This emphasis on destiny is interesting to me. Sora, essentially a non-wielder who gained the ability to wield thanks to Riku’s heart choosing Sora over himself, was never ‘destined’ to wield the keyblade. Or, at least, not destined to wield the Kingdom Key (destined to wield Kingdom Key D, however… see this link to another theory that I think holds water). Whereas Destiny’s Embrace suggests that Kairi was always destined to become a keyblade wielder, which is… odd, given that her ‘inheriting’ of the keyblade from Aqua was a fluke. But what WASN’T a fluke was Aqua putting a charm on Kairi’s necklace and saying it would take her to someone that would keep her safe. She was destined to be protected, and sure enough, if Riku did make this keyblade for her, then this destiny is fulfilled. Interesting again to note that Riku, not Sora, was the one protecting her in this instance.

Kairi’s Keyblade: The Paopu Keychain

Why is it that Destiny’s Embrace has a paopu keychain? I have a few ideas, some of which are more plausible than others.

1.) Riku wanted to share a paopu with Kairi

Wow, what a rogue idea! Full (and probably obvious) disclosure: I’m a SoRiku shipper and read a lot of the KHI moments of Riku getting jealous and bitchy as him being jealous that Sora didn’t like him, but let me just take my SoRiku goggles off for a hot second and… put my KaiRiku ones on?? It’s not as crazy as it seems.

As mentioned earlier, a huge part of Riku’s motivations in KHI was protecting Kairi and getting her heart back, and he even thanks Kairi for coming to the island and inspiring him to seek a world beyond Destiny Islands. During his race with Sora in KHI, he says that if he wins then he wants to share a paopu with Kairi (again, let’s say that this wasn’t actually Riku just trying to razz Sora and there was a part of him that did genuinely want to share it with her). If Destiny’s Embrace really is a keyblade that Riku forged for Kairi in order to keep her safe, then the paopu keychain is essentially him finally getting to share a paopu with her as per his request in KHI.

Now, of course, paopu fruits don’t necessarily have romantic connotations all the time. It could be that he just wanted to keep the two of them close, like how Kairi gave Sora her way-finder. Regardless of if this is read as romantic or platonic, Kairi’s keychain being a paopu fruit is symbolic of her relationship with Riku— and I would also extend it to Sora as well. If Riku gave both of them keyblades, he’s kind of like some secret guardian watching over those that matter to him and wanting to keep them safe. He is the origin of all of their keyblades, and in this way binds the Destiny Trio together.

‘Ah, but Alchemist!’ I hear you cry. ‘Riku no longer wants to protect the THINGS that matter, as KHIII made it very clear he cares about one person and one person only: Sora.’

Fair point. I think KHIII did Kairi and Riku’s relationship SUPER FUCKING DIRTY, but it’s also true that Riku’s number one priority is and always has been Sora. Giving Kairi a paopu fruit to keep the three of them together does make sense for his character, but when push comes to shove, Riku would probably push Kairi off a cliff if it would save Sora (I mean come on, RIku would throw HIMSELF off a bloody cliff if it would save Sora, and take King Mickey along with him for good measure). So maybe the keychain means something else.

2.) Kairi’s ‘destiny’ is a solitary one

So why does Kairi have a complete paopu fruit all to herself, but the combined halves of Sora’s Nightmare’s End and Riku’s Mirage Split together make a whole paopu fruit?

We know that if two people share a paopu fruit, they will remain part of each other’s lives forever. In effect: their destiny’s become entwined. The Gayblade being formed of two halves to form a whole, and being a keyblade that both Sora and Riku share, is a clear illustration that Sora and Riku’s destiny’s are entwined. By sharing this keyblade with its paopu imagery, they essentially seem to be sharing the same destiny. But Kairi has her own fruit, and it isn’t being shared with anyone. This makes for a rather tragic reading of her character, but one that seems to make sense given the events of KHIII:

If the Gayblade paopu is symbolic of Riku and Sora sharing the same destiny, the paopu of Destiny’s Embrace is symbolic of Kairi’s destiny being a solitary one. Her destiny is one that she will have to face alone, with no one to share it with her.

I’m sure you are all aware of the star-crossed quality that characterises SoKai; Sora even explicitly states this at the end of KHIII when he vents his frustration of always being separated from Kairi just when it looks like they can finally be together. Then there’s the fact that Kairi seems to have been left on her own in some alternate Destiny Islands at the very end of KHIII, so this all points to her destiny being apart from those of her close friends. Her ‘place’ (Destiny’s Place) is separate from them. And this is rather apt, given what her name means: Kairi means ‘ocean’, of course, but it also means ‘separation’.

We can take ‘separation’ in many ways: she tried to separate Sora from Riku in KHI by suggesting they take the raft together, and she seemed to keep them separated again in KHIII with the now infamous paopu scene. But really, the separation is felt most keenly on her end. Sora and Riku were friends long before she washed up on Destiny Islands, and they’re always going off and having adventures without her and leaving her behind. In KHII she very fervently states her desire for the three of them to stay together from now on, and almost immediately after she is separated from them AGAIN. The Destiny Trio is an uneven trio in a lot of ways, and while I could also write about the ways Riku is excluded from it, Kairi is excluded from it just as much if not more so. And that is why a single paopu fruit just to herself is fitting: no one to share it with, a destiny that she will have to face by herself.

3.) Kairi is whole but Sora and Riku are incomplete

And this is the batshit crazy side of this epically long journey through my thoughts, but while I’m here I may as well put it down. What if Kairi, having a whole fruit, is symbolic of her having a full and complete destiny, being a full and complete person? What if the two halves of the Gayblade actually mean that apart, Sora and Riku are ‘incomplete’? Yes this is all cute and romantic in one sense, but what if they are literally incomplete? Admittedly this idea is fuelled purely by Yozora, who seems to be a combination of the two of them. But I don’t really want to get into what the fuck Yozora could possibly be (An ultimate fusion of them both? Their illicit lovechild? Some dude who just really loves cosplaying Riku but made it ‘edgy’?) and so I’ll just end this one right here. I don’t have much stock in this particular reading but eh, thought it worth shoving down anyways while I’m here.

[howlsmovinglibrary]

So i noticed you reblogged a lot of got. I followed you bc of your book reviews. I wonder if you read ASOIAF? It'd be cool for you to review it. And also it'd provide me see your stand towards the writing of the last season, & your perspective towards Arya as retconned Night King slayer, the dull (and abusive) romance bw jnerys, jon's character assassination and the lack of his POV, and the show being Dany's show (at the expense of other chars).

Oh wow anon, it’s very rare that I get asked to go off, but I’m more than happy to take you up on the invitation to rant!

In answer to your first question, I have read the first book of ASOIAF, but unfortunately I personally feel George R.R. Martin’s strength is his plotting, and now that the show has kind of unmasked the plot of those first books I find it difficult to slog through his writing style, just because it’s not suited to me. I got to 100 pages from the end where Ned Stark is wondering whether or not he’s gonna die and was like…I kind of know how this ends.

As for my manifold problems with the writing of this last season, I have them, although they don’t seem to be lined up with yours exactly. I have placed this under the keep reading tag, because Long Post. And Spoilers.

Arya

Ok, so as for the Arya plotline, I actually didn’t mind this. I realise it goes against a lot of the material of the books (which I haven’t read), but I think that however much of a retcon it is it makes a lot of logical consistency within Arya’s storyline itself. I was personally getting to the point, with Arya going around Winterfell and not really doing much, of wondering “why did she go to assassin school again?” I think that her getting to kill the Night King validates a lot of her plot arc, whereas before her training was slowly becoming useless and irrelevant to the current situation the writers had put her in - of course this goes out of the window come the last war.

I would actually argue that this decision, bar its illogical and rushed execution, had elements of why I loved GoT’s more established plot twists. You had a strong fantasy genre trope, the Chosen One, in Jon, and then reality intervenes and breaks it. Jon is trying to fight a fucking huge dragon, and is therefore, logically, preoccupied. So someone else gets the kill. I liked that. I mean, it seems like prophecy has just been UTTERLY DISREGARDED in this entire season rather than twisted or subverted, so I guess if we’re feeling particularly generous (which no one is) it might even be “making a point”.

 And yes, we haven’t seen any of her assassin powers over the course of this season (because the writers are retconning her into a nicer ‘antihero’ and not outright eviscerating psychopath), which makes me wonder why she even has them. But I’m actually ok with her getting the Night King kill.

And I’ll dream of the alternate universe where Arya kills Cersei wearing Jaime’s face, actually utilising her skills, getting her ‘green eyed’ kill, and fulfilling Cersei’s prophecy.

Danaerys

So, I hate Danaerys, but I don’t really agree with your viewpoint of her. I don’t really feel like this became ‘her’ season at all. In fact, I feel like this season was just a lesson in how to gaslight a woman into madness and relegate her entirely from her own fucking story.

I will outright state that, I wanted Danaerys to go Mad Queen. I think her character has had problematic elements from very close to the beginning: regarding her sense of entitlement which is not underpinned by an actual competency in regards to ruling, her idealism, and her tendency as a white character to weaponise the brown people she essentially colonises for her own goals. These are not the reasons D&D give to justify her ‘madness’. In fact, they say she’s always been mad for punishing abusers. It just shows now…because of a bad break up.

Danaerys’ “descent into madness” was so badly written that I get mad just thinking about it. It essentially comprises all the men around her having conversations with each other saying “I think she might go mad”, and then her doing a Bad Thing for no discernable reason. This is 1. BAD WRITING, because SHOW NOT TELL. Also, NARRATIVE CONSISTENCY. If you have to have Tyrion outright narrate what you are retconning as her evil past, which is what he did in the final episode, you have not written a consistent plot. Viewers are not stupid. And 2. It’s just awful in terms of gender. Literally, Dany is a woman who becomes isolated and the men around her pathologise her as mad rather than communicating with her and allowing her the agency to authorise her own existence. It’s like The Yellow Wallpaper. There’s so much gaslighting! Everyone says she’s mad for thinking people will betray her as they betray her in the same breath! Jon says he loves her and then punishes her for desiring him! It’s just absurd. I wanted this to happen and they still fucked it up.

Once her sexual desire is just for her and no longer consumable by the male viewer, because its incestuous, and her ambitions outstrip the men around her, suddenly she’s evil. 

And do not get me started on all the awful racial connotations of her story a) being fuelled by the pointless fridging of the only named black woman and b) being utterly endorsed by all the people of colour within the show unquestioningly while all the ‘good’ white men suddenly have their doubts. The way Dothraki war cries were basically used as background music to signify evil savagery made me sick. They literally weaponised race as a way of connoting fear and evil. The fact that her “evil speech” was basically a straw feminist recycling of her liberation rhetoric in a way to condemn all her thoroughly understandable and initially intentions from the very beginning was just a way to validate every Incel’s fear about SJW discourse. Instead of, I don’t know, CRITICISING HER AS A COLONISER. Maybe unveiling her hypocrisy? Nope! All black people are evil and will never question orders because they have been consistently stripped of their humanity! They are a faceless army of non-whites! And oh yes, all women are evil for wanting to enact violence on those who want to abuse them!

Honestly, I think this season of the show has been as much at the expense of her character as anyone else’s. Because it’s not been written well, or believably, and it feels like a complete reduction of the very real potential she had as a critique of imperialism. She’s just a mad woman. 

Jon

I can’t really talk that much about Jon. I kind of cover it above. I’m not sure if you think Jonaerys is abusive to Dany or to him, I would argue the former because of the gaslighting. 

But I will say, he must’ve taken his refresher course in Stark Honourable Stupidity after actually being competent in Season 7. According to D&D’s logic, if he had simply slept with Dany, a woman he loves, she wouldn’t have gone mad. It’s only in GoT that I can justify incest, but he should’ve taken one for the team. 

And maybe kept secrets better.

Just…the show in general

Really, I’m just so disappointed with the show in general. The plot, like Jaime’s characterisation, is so profoundly circular.

We still have an iron throne. We still have an utterly corrupt council elected through nepotism (although I guess we’re supposed to like them now?) Fuck, we still even have a wall even though ALL THE WHITEWALKERS ARE GONE.

Everything was so rushed and irreverent to the point of incompetency - I mean, everyone has seen the coffee cup. Prophecy and foreshadowing was utterly disregarded (I’ve spared you my Jaime Lannister rant because you didn’t ask), nuance was completely lost. I cannot believe that Cersei’s death was an anticlimax, that she didn’t do anything in that final battle but shed a manly tear, had barely any lines of dialogue despite the fact that she is one of the strongest characters of the entire series. And yet EURON GREYJOY got a triumphant death. It is so disingenuous. I really don’t think the fanbase would’ve been that hard to please but it seems like everything was denied us in the name of ‘subverting expectations’.

And however well shot the battle scenes were, I found it profoundly boring because there was no real motivation to drive the action. It was just screaming, and death, and oh yes some gratuitous rape because that’s what every viewer is here for, right?! I watch Game of Thrones for the character intrigue, not the violence or the blatant misunderstanding of what “authentic medievalism” entails. The fact that I watched the finale of my favourite show and did not cry once - me, who cried four times in a single Critical Role episode - is just a testament to how hollow and heartless the writing became.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Supergirl season three full review

How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?

100% (twenty-three of twenty-three).

What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?

57.23%

How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?

All but one (it was that crappy crossover episode). All but four have casts over 50%.

How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?

Zero.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Forty-four. Twenty who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Thirty-four. Ten who appeared in more than one episode, four who appeared in at least half the episodes, and one who appeared in every episode.

Positive Content Status:

Not bad; a handful of episodes included some sincere effort to make quality statements about social issues, but they were pretty clunky about it and not always successful; certainly never impressive enough to increase the content rating (average rating of 3).

General Season Quality:

Middling. It was full of useless plot threads and wasted time, and much of the content had no real function; consequently, the central story arc lacked stakes, emotional resonance, and heart. That said, most of the episodes are basically solid viewing, and there was infinitely less rage-inducing content than there was in season two. That’s a weak win, but still a win.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:

Hey, remember Morgan Edge? He was in four episodes at the beginning of the season, served no real narrative function despite his prominent treatment within those recurrences, and then Lena had him arrested using the most obviously-coerced confession in history? Sure, he was guilty, but he confessed under duress while being actively threatened with death by drone, the evidence of both the tape itself and of the testimony of the many eyewitnesses to the attack would have had him bouncing out of jail like that. The ridiculousness of that plot ‘resolution’ was even worse than the meaninglessness of Edge’s character in the first place. Remember when, briefly, they pretended that Morgan Edge was important?

Edge is a prime example of the fatal flaw in this entire season: pointless plot threads that went nowhere, meant nothing, furthered no characterisation for regular characters, and had no impact on the central arc of the season. Story-wise, the season lurched all over the place, and while it wasn’t without its good elements, ultimately it achieved very little. Sure, the season ended with a number of apparent changes for most of the major characters’ lives (though, conspicuously, not Kara’s) - Alex is now head of the DEO, J’onn is doing...something else, hopefully not something that removes him from the show, Winn has apparently gone to the future, traded out for our new friend ‘Brainy’ (a change I will be happy for if it sticks), and James has publicly revealed himself as Guardian - but the thing is, these changes are mostly last-minute, not things that the season was building toward all along. These changes are mostly not the result of character arcs, they’re just things that are happening now as set-up for next season. This season itself? Not much happened.

We wasted quite a lot of time with Mon-El, AGAIN, which is especially disappointing because it’s the largest time-and-attention-suck of the season, and it is completely irrelevant to everything; at least when we were wasting time with Mon-El last season, it was because he was the centrepiece of the (awful) plot. This time around, he’s just there to draaagg out the fallout from his departure, so that instead of getting over the relationship within the six months between the end of last season and the beginning of this one, Kara can continue to pine ridiculously and then get caught up in ~complicated feelings~ when Mon-El reappears, back from the future and bringing his new wife with him. That’s the closest thing Kara gets to a personal arc this season, actually; having ~complicated feelings~ about Mon-El. So, her story isn’t really about herself, it’s about whatever Mon-El is doing (again!), and then after wasting the entire season on that sorry excuse for a story, they amicably split in the end and he goes back to the future and that’s...it? I sincerely hope that’s it, and that he won’t be appearing again as a regular on the show, but it’s also a super disappointing waste of time. They didn’t have to bring Mon-El back at all, not for some drawn-out version of ‘closure’ for Kara, and not for any of the other nothing that his presence achieved in the meantime. Honestly, having characters show up FROM THE FUTURE and then not doing anything useful or important with it is so weird. We coulda dropped Brainy here and sent Winn away in a short-arc subplot, it’d have been neater and less time consuming, and we wouldn’t have troubled with all the Mon-El and Imra crap. As much as Mon-El kept carrying on about how he would never disrespect Imra, the story itself disrespects her by giving her no other meaningful narrative function than to be a barrier between Mon-El and Kara (which, as the story plays out...didn’t matter anyway). The whole thing amounts to a lot of bluster with no real impact; we end the season with Mon-El gone and Kara having to move on, and that’s EXACTLY HOW WE ENDED LAST TIME.

Meanwhile, back at the actual central arc for the season, shit was still whack, y’all. I wondered what they were gonna do with it after they went and had Reign show up so early in the piece (I thought maybe they were gonna build over the course of the season with Samantha progressively losing more control, but, that woulda required narrative pacing and story building to be in play, and the creators weren’t into that kind of crap this season), and what they went for was a completely pointless side-distraction with two other, lesser world-killers, who appeared out of nowhere, fooled around for a few episodes, and then died, ne’er to trouble the story again. Reign absorbing their powers didn’t have any effect (particularly egregious since the Legion was so worried about Pestilence, only to declare their work done once she was gone because apparently, Reign wasn’t gonna go around using that particular world-killer power anyway, because...reasons), they might as well have never included other world-killers at all, the only reason they were there was so that the plot could tread water for a while after revealing its Big Gun at mid-season and having nowhere left to go. Selena and her fellow witches, likewise, proved utterly pointless, just another distraction that wound up easily dispatched, and meanwhile Reign was killed/separated from Samantha only to return again and then be pretty easily defeated anyway with a combination of shoddy time travel and the last-minute addition of a convenient...magic fountain. Yeah. Even the oft-repeated notion they hammered about saving Samantha by recalling her to herself, using her connection with Ruby, etc, turned out to be a total smokescreen - Samantha and Ruby both proved to be total plot devices rather than characters in their own right, foisted on the pre-existing characters to generate artificial emotional stakes with a friendship that burst forth fully-formed in the space of two episodes, and giving Alex a child to focus her maternal instincts on for a while. Presumably, we’ll now never see them again. 

Oh, and did I mention that Kara finds out that her mother and a whole chunk of Krypton actually survived, but they totally underplay it and she has essentially no emotional reaction to this development at all? Since this seemingly life-altering revelation also has no impact on character or story, they might as well not have bothered, I mean, Kara is more hung up on losing her asshole boyfriend from last season than she is on discovering that a whole piece of her world (friends/family included) is actually still around, so. Who needs logical characterisation, anyway? For all that Kara complains about feeling out of balance living two lives, she also spends almost no time living as Kara Danvers instead of Supergirl in this season (especially the second half); remember when her job as a reporter used to matter to character or story, like, at all? Remember when actually being seen to balance things was a source of narrative conflict and development? Now, if she had discovered that surviving part of Krypton near the BEGINNING of the season instead of in the fourth-last episode, maybe she could have spent the season having, I dunno, a sort of character arc about dealing with it? Selena and the relevant mythology on the world-killers and the ways to kill them/make them/whatever could have all been introduced in earlier parts of the season so that they could BUILD THE FUCKING NARRATIVE instead of just throwing in convenient new plot devices and information at the last second? Maybe the whole story could have been improved by making it actually about the character the series is named after, and analysing her still-developing relationship with her identity and its duality? It’s such a fucking obvious character arc I want to punch something. How, HOW was this not what the whole season was about? How did we end up futzing around with Mon-El and pointless future-visitors and extra antagonists who didn’t matter to the season or its characters at all?

If you forgot that they also had some time-wasting with some fanatical cult crap on Earth that mostly just served to provide Kara with yet another character to drop explainers about things instead of having her learn stuff in some kind of plot-related fashion, I could understand; it was pretty forgettable. Alex and Maggie broke up, which was rather sudden and wasteful, really, but at least it was tied to Alex’s realisation that she wants to have children and that constituted one of the only solid character threads of this messy, wishy-washy season (though it also often kept Alex distracted in other parts of the story and not having those all-important sisterly interactions with Kara which formed the backbone of the show in the first season, so, boo for that). J’onn had his dad around for a while, and that was legitimately pretty good stuff (y’all know I’m weak for Martians), though I really hope it has some strong narrative fallout in season four because otherwise it seems like a plot designed to torture J’onn emotionally, as if his story isn’t already tragic enough. They also wasted James less this season? Unfortunately, they wasted Lena more, and I’m especially suspicious of the way they not only strangled the amount of story she spent with Kara as a friend, they also threw in this awkwardly-executed situation with Lena actively disliking Supergirl and turning Kara’s secret into something which jeopardises their future relationship. Their interactions last season were so strong, and the effort to put space between them in this season feels overt (giving Lena a romance with James and a new/old best friend in Samantha contributes to this); I can’t help but wonder if the Powers That Be were upset that they’d accidentally made a female relationship with more chemistry than the canon-lesbian couple (and at the same time as they were badly failing at giving Kara a believable hetero love interest, no less) and decided that breaking up one of their best character partnerships was preferable to anyone reading the hero of the story as anything other than straight. They’ve made so many hugely questionable decisions about Kara’s personal life at this point, no BTS fuckery would surprise me. Remember season one, when the plot had a shape and the characters generally did things for understandable reasons? Those were the days. We’re closer to getting back to them now than we were after the disaster that was last season, but I’m still not banking on the show ever regaining the focused quality which made the first season work so well. To do that, they have to start telling stories about Kara again, at minimum. That would be a start.